Despite putting on one of the best short-track races in modern history at Bristol, NASCAR’s Next Gen car failed to live up to expectations at the Martinsville Speedway. If tire wear at the Bristol Motor Speedway was extreme, it was almost nonexistent on Sunday. Several drivers and insiders spoke up against Goodyear, including Bubba Wallace’s spotter Freddie Kraft. Given his comments on a recent episode of the Door Bumper Clear podcast, he was almost in shock.

NASCAR spotter was stunned by almost non-existent tire wear at Martinsville

Freddie Kraft is no newbie. He has been in the sport for several years and probably has been a NASCAR fan since he was a kid. The veteran has seen NASCAR in its early days and claims that the tire situation at Martinsville would not have happened in any era. Martinsville is already a tough place to pass, so without there being much strategy at play, it was quite boring. Bubba Wallace might have finished P4 but this aspect of the race really took Kraft aback.

“It would be unheard of years ago…we had 100 laps on our tiers. We pit with 102 to go…you had to come. That was unheard of to stay on old tires like that especially with…I think there were 14 or 15 cars in the lead lap at that point so it’s not even like a huge pit list. It’s not like you’re going back to 25th if you pit, you gonna be at worst 15th. I was reading Gabehart’s comments about why they pit and it was basically like, ‘we already have 2 wins, we’re not gonna win from fourth on the same tires so if them guys all stay out, you might as well come because 4th and 10th are essentially the same to us,” he said.

Criticism comes later but finishing as high up as possible takes precedence no matter what the race conditions are. That’s what the #23 team focused on during the race and thanks to crew chief Bootie Barker’s decision to stay out, Bubba Wallace was able to finish in an impressive P4. For his boss Denny Hamlin though, things were not so good.

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Hamlin did pit towards the end of the race in hopes of gaining a lot of places through the pack or hoping that others would pit as well. But new tires seemed to do nothing against the old ones. It was almost like tire changes did not mean anything. He too went in hard against Goodyear on a recent episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast after finishing P11.

“Goodyear is missing the mark and we clearly know that having a tire that falls off, we’ve seen it. Bristol gave us the evidence that says this is better. Did it need to go to that extreme? No. But we damn sure shouldn’t have a car leading the race with 180 laps on his left side tires, that is ridiculous,” the driver of the #11 car opined.

After Bristol, this certainly came as a big disappointment. Hamlin was one of the many drivers who believed that the tire makers would have a good idea about what tires to get to short-track races. When horsepower is low, tire wear has to be the compensator, but that was not the case at Martinsville or even Richmond. Where will Goodyear go from here in terms of the short-track tires? Only time will tell.

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