Denny Hamlin questions reasons for Goodyear tires wearing out quickly at Bristol

Denny Hamlin and the rest of the NASCAR world are trying to figure out what went wrong with Goodyear’s tires during the Food City 500.

During the latest episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin theorized the weather had a lot to do with it, and not the material Bristol put down on the track, like some have predicted was the culprit.

“I did see that the outside temperature of the last two Bristol races was 70 degrees. Because they were all night races. This is the first time with us being back at Bristol, in the spring, in four years. So it was cooler,” Hamlin started, theorizing the track temperature was the main culprit. “Now I will tell you this, I mean we’re trying to figure this out on the fly here in the middle of podcasts, I’m just going to try to draw conclusions. ‘Okay, well, that’s not it. That’s not it.’ The thing is, is that the middle of the track was untreated. It didn’t matter if you had PJ1 on it before, resin now. It didn’t matter.

“If you ran the middle of the track, it clearly was worse on tire wear, and that was untreated. So let’s throw that out. It’s not the resin.”

Moving forward, Hamlin truly does believe it had more to do with the temperature than anything else, and the Joe Gibbs Racing star is of the belief that Martinsville could be similar, if the weather doesn’t get to 65 degrees.

“If we still had chording problems with tires, definitely made for the fall race of last year, then it’s a track temperature problem,” Hamlin doubled down. “And what I will tell you is that Martinsville is another concrete track that refuses to take rubber, unless it’s at least 65 degrees outside. It was 60 today. 70 degrees, that track will be black as asphalt. The tires, it gets hot. That surface gets hot. It just, it allows the pores of the racetrack to be filled.

“The reason that the lower line was better on tires is it was filled with all this crap that they’ve sprayed on it and powdered on it and rubber that we’ve run on. That’s why it was better on tires. You go to the middle lane, it was like brand new. It was like a sheet of paper, just white, so the pores were not filling in.”

Regardless, Denny Hamlin was able to handle the unexpected turn of events with flying colors, and ended up in Victory Lane because of it. Now, the onus is on Goodyear and NASCAR to figure out just what went wrong equipment wise, and not have it happen again.