During his time as a driver and fan, Richard Petty has seen just about everything there is to see on a racetrack. However, he recently admitted that he’s never seen tire wear like NASCAR recently went through during its race at Bristol.
While speaking to Dale Inman, Petty answered a fan question asking if he’s seen wear like that before on tires. However, the King admitted that while he’s seen tires wear out before, he hasn’t seen it happen the way it did at Bristol.
“Not the way it went,” Richard Petty said. “We’ve seen tire wear over the years with all the different race tracks we run, but I’ve never seen anything like where so many people wore out the tires at the same time within four or five laps. Everybody just wore their tires out. Basically, no. I’ve never seen tire wear work out exactly the way it did at Bristol.”
In the end, Denny Hamlin won at Bristol. He was followed up by a pair of veteran drivers, Martin Truex Jr. and Brad Keselowski, which former driver and analyst Jeff Burton said wasn’t a surprise, given the conditions that everyone was driving in.
After the race, Hamlin explained that it was like drivers were racing against the track more than they were against one another.
“Everyone was just trying to manage their own race,” Hamlin said. “It was almost like Darlington where everyone’s just kinda racing the track. Now this is back in the old Darlington before they repaved it, but you’re racing the track. You really were. You’re just trying to hold your line, not get passed but run fast enough to stay in front but not wear out your tires and whoever wanted to make passes would just go to the high line, make a pass and then try to get back down low again. It was a chess game; it really was for 500 laps.”
Despite those conditions, there were plenty of eyes on Bristol, with 3.809 viewers. That’s up 10% from last year at Bristol. Only the NCAA Tournament Selection Show had a higher viewership than that.
For its part, Goodyear is taking a closer look at what happened during the race at Bristol.
Jeff Burton doesn’t expect repeat of Bristol tire situation at Richmond Raceway
Even though the tire issue at Bristol was so extreme, former driver and current analyst Jeff Burton doesn’t expect a repeat of that situation at Richmond.
“I don’t think so. I think we had a, you know, we didn’t see this at Phoenix. This was a set of very unique circumstances that happened that we’re not fully understanding why just yet,” Burton said.
“So, do I think we’ll see more tires fall off at Richmond than we saw in the past? I do, but I don’t think we’re gonna see something like this happen at Richmond. We didn’t see it at Phoenix. I think this was something that was very unique and unusual. I don’t think it’s gonna be common.”
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