BRISTOL, Tenn. — Tyler Allen celebrated his first NASCAR Cup Series win as a crew chief when he, Ty Gibbs and the No. 54 team won at Bristol Motor Speedway in the spring.
They return to the Tennessee bull ring hoping to sweep the season of Bristol races with the Bass Pro Shops Night Race in the third race of The Chase presented by Mobil 1 on Saturday (7:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
MORE: Cup Series standings | Bristol schedule
This time, the No. 54 Toyota shows up in a new but familiar style, donning the iconic M&M’s colors return to Joe Gibbs Racing in a gorgeous tribute to the late Kyle Busch, a two-time Cup champion who carried those colors from 2008 through 2022, collecting 56 of his 63 career wins at JGR. To see the distinctive yellow, red, blue and green again was an emotional experience for Allen, who began his Cup career in 2017 working on Busch’s car and stayed through 2020, winning the 2019 title alongside Busch.
“It’s pretty surreal,” Allen told NASCAR.com on Friday. “You know, this weekend’s about KB and their whole family. That was the first Cup car that I got to work on as an engineer and working with KB for all those years. I about got choked up when they were wrapping it on Monday. It was just really incredible all the the memories to have with him, and it’s an honor to have that paint scheme on our car. So really excited.”
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To win again, Allen knows he needs to give Gibbs “everything he needs.” Sure. But what does that entail?
“We’ve got to get into the corner well. It’s got to turn the center, and he’s got to have security on exit,” Allen said. “It’s really difficult to do with this package. At some point in the night, he’s not going to have everything he needs, but he’s got to optimize what he’s got and we’ve got to work on it.”
Gibbs and the No. 54 team sit tied for sixth in The Chase entering Saturday’s 500-lap contest, 51 points behind series leader and JGR teammate Denny Hamlin. While the win-and-in system of playoff racing is gone, winners in The Chase so far — Christopher Bell and Kyle Larson — have enjoyed massive points swings that have swung those previously-winless drivers into contention to win the championship. That emphasizes the benefits of a victory this time of year.
“All these races matter, and the points have really compressed with the winners,” Allen said. “So we’re hoping to come out of here with a win.”
Just as eager to win is Chris Buescher and the No. 17 RFK Racing team, but through a bit of a different lens.
Crew chief Scott Graves told NASCAR.com Friday his top priority this weekend is getting his team back on track after a “pretty bad start for the first two races to The Chase.” A 20th-place run in the opening race at Darlington Raceway was followed by a frustrating day at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway, where a brake rotor on Buescher’s No. 17 Ford exploded with just two laps to go in regulation. The No. 17 bunch is 13th of 16 Chase drivers in The Chase, 111 points behind Hamlin for the championship lead.
“Obviously we need to get get that corrected,” Graves said.
In years past, Bristol had served as the first elimination race in NASCAR’s postseason, where the bottom four drivers would be ousted from championship contention, meaning Buescher would have entered as the first driver facing elimination Saturday night. That changes with the re-introduction of The Chase, where instead the totality of the 10-week schedule counts toward determining the champion at Homestead-Miami Speedway in November.
“The desperation side of it is a little a little lower because you’d be looking at a cutoff in our situation the way with the first two races went,” Graves said. “It probably would have been like a must-win situation. But honestly, if we want to do better in The Chase, if we want to get to the top five — I mean, we were seventh in points for majority of the year. And to be sitting where we’re sitting right now is is kind of tough to to swallow. So to get back to that seventh, I mean you’re kind of looking at the same thing. Like you almost have to win at this point as far back as we are. We’ve got to make a big jump.
“So yeah, the level of desperation of, ‘this could be the last race for our Chase’ is not there. But to get where we want to be, where we know we can be performance-wise, we’re kind of in the same spot. We need something big.”
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Calling strategy for Saturday’s showdown will depend upon a few factors, particularly the longevity of a tire’s life and how the rubber lays into the concrete surface.
Cool temperatures in past Bristol races dating back to the spring of 2024 have resulted in excessive tire wear that led to extremely frequent pit stops. Warmer weather has typically produced a standard racing event with long-lasting tires.
“I don’t want to eat my words. It looks like it’s going to be a normal Bristol race in terms of tires, and there’s very little fall off, so I would expect some long runs,” Allen said. “With no foam behind the (front) bumpers, the drivers have been a little more hesitant to get aggressive and make contact, and that lends itself to longer green-flag runs. So that’s kind of what I’m expecting.”
The other side of the conversation is where on the race track that rubber creates a groove on the surface. If either the top lane or the bottom lane becomes dominant during the race, teams will need to chase adjustments on their cars to best navigate the changing conditions.
“Some of it depends on how much the top comes in,” Graves said. “If we go off the spring race, the bottom was more dominant. So from a setup standpoint, sometimes we sell out thinking early into the race or halfway through the race, the top’s going to come in and be a big factor in the race, and so you set your setup for that and it’s a little bit of an unknown honestly. But having to be good on the bottom, I think, is going to be really important as long as the the PJ1 (traction compound) stays together.
“And then strategy, there were some guys that were able to stay out and make it work. So having something that works on that long run without the tires going away is be really helpful on the strategy side.”
