Second Thoughts on NASCAR: What if Bristol tire issue occurs in elimination race?

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Amid all the glee from fans that a tire-management race finally returned to Bristol and there needs to be more of it, I had one contrarian thought when thinking ahead to September.

The Bristol night race is an elimination race, following two wild-card first-round races in some ways in Atlanta and Watkins Glen. What would fans say if their favorite driver goes into Bristol needing points or to hold position to make the playoffs and then gets eliminated if they get a flat tire?

The Sunday race was more a surprising case of roulette than tire management in that drivers weren’t pitting because tire fall-off was so great that they could go faster on new tires. They were going as fast as they thought they could expecting (hoping?) another driver would have a flat and bring out the caution.

So I posed the question to Hendrick drivers Tuesday afternoon while at the shop as to whether they would be OK with that type of event for an elimination race, and they seemed to be relatively OK with it — with the caveat being as long as they knew beforehand they had to manage tires.

“Look in the mirror — you did it to yourself,” Chase Elliott said. “That’s how I look at it. As long as you know it’s coming. That’s the big thing. You need to know what you have to work with.

“If we know that is going to be the environment that we go back in, that we adjust to it. We fix a lot of the longevity issues ourselves.”

Elliott pointed out that the tires didn’t just go catastrophically flat without warning Sunday. A driver would have a couple of laps at least to get to pit road. In fact, drivers stayed out knowing their tires were about to go flat in hopes that another driver would bring out the caution.

“That’s way more in a driver’s control than a normal week is,” Alex Bowman said. “Normal Bristol race where you run 500 laps wide open as hard as you can — if your car is good, you’re good; and if your car is not good, you struggle.

“If you have perfect pit stops, you’re great. If you have one bad pit stop, it’s almost impossible to pass your way back up through there [with tires that don’t wear].”

William Byron seemed most concerned about the scenario I described.

“The regular season is one thing to have races that don’t go according to plan — it’s exciting and entertaining,” he said. “But I don’t think it is fair to the competitors and the teams to not know what you’re getting into.”

The comments weren’t what I expected — I figured the thought of another possible roll of the dice in the first round, especially for an elimination race, might concern them.

It definitely made me think that Goodyear and NASCAR inadvertently found something that maybe could be improved upon for a great, exciting Bristol race. Even one that might eliminate your favorite driver. 

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.

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