Chase Elliott Says NASCAR Aero Issues Eased, But Tire Questions Remain Unanswered

• The tire situation that developed early in the Bristol race caught everyone off guard—NASCAR, Goodyear and the teams.

• Tire wear was extensive, with cords showing within 30 to 40 laps.

• The race turned into a tire management event because rubber was not adhering to the concrete track in the middle and upper grooves.

Aero issues during a race have monopolized drivers remarks after NASCAR Cup events in recent years, but when the tires low grip level was coupled with the slower pace in Bristol Motor Speedway’s Food City 500, those problems were erased, Chase Elliott said.

“Normally, you can’t get to a guy’s bumper to hit him even if you wanted to without just completely wrecking your own corner and doing it,” Elliott said when reflecting on the event a few days after the checkered flag waved at the half-mile track.

“We were going at a pace that we could be close to each other and be around each other. We were sliding around trying not to hurt tires. A lot of the race was in your hands as a driver as to what you could do. There’s got to be some good lessons to take from this because our product could be way improved in my view. There were some good things that happened there on Sunday.”

While the conditions allowed the drivers to experience a racing environment they haven’t faced in several years, Elliott believes numerous questions must be answered before NASCAR and Goodyear can determine what created Sunday’s situation.

“Was it the tire?” Elliott asks. “Was it the resin? Was it the fact that it was cool, and the sun was out? We didn’t lay any rubber. Why did that happen? Was it a concrete thing? Could that ever happen on asphalt? There’s just so many questions that no one has the answers to (at this time). We need to answer the questions and understand how we got there so that we know what knobs to turn to recreate it.”

The tire situation that developed early in the race caught everyone off guard—NASCAR, Goodyear and the teams. Tire wear was extensive, with cords showing within 30 to 40 laps. The race turned into a tire management event because rubber was not adhering to the concrete track in the middle and upper grooves. Resin was placed in the low groove because it performed better than PJ-1 with NASCAR’s wet weather package. Rain had been predicted earlier in the week. The resin was reapplied Sunday morning after Saturday night’s truck race which had no tire problems.

“It was certainly a change of pace from what we typically have,” Elliott says. “I do think that was probably on the extreme side of things. But even if you just left things alone and you gave the teams and the drivers an opportunity to kind of know that was coming, I think it would probably fix a lot of it on its own.

“The one thing that makes me nervous when things like this happen … is we all get out of the car and Goodyear gets scared to death because of what we’re gonna say about the tire and what kind of publicity that gives them. Then, the next thing you know, we’re racing on bricks for the next 10 years because they’re scared to death of having something like that happen again.”

Elliott emphasized that no one told the drivers to be happy when they exited their cars and were immediately confronted by the media. He said their reactions were “genuine” because “it was fun.”

Kyle Larson, who finished fifth, was the only driver who seemed to be extremely unhappy after the race, saying he had never run “a race like that” and he hoped he never would “have to run a race like that again.” He called it “probably a black eye to Goodyear.”

Two days after the race, Larson said that after reading comments to his remarks that maybe he “didn’t do a great job of explaining myself because I did have a blast.”

“It was a lot of fun. I think it was just a little too extreme of tire wear,” Larson said. “I think we all want that tire wear, but I would have loved to see the rubber get laid into the surface as well, so we can move around a little bit more.”

Goodyear plans a Bristol tire test before the September event, which is the cutoff race in the Playoffs first round.