Denny Hamlin is theorizing Goodyear brought a different chemical mixture in their tires to NASCAR’s race at Bristol last weekend.
During the latest episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin first explained how surprised he was, along with the rest of the field, with how high the tire-wear was, from the start of the weekend to when he won the Food City 500.
“Well, it was a surprise going into the weekend. Yes,” Hamlin said, asked when he knew something was off. “We had an indication after practice. After 30 laps of practice the tires, were bald. Martin [Truex Jr.] came over to me, Ty [Gibbs] came over to me and says, ‘What the hell is going on? Like, this is the weirdest thing.’ You know, everyone set up their cars to probably be just like they were in the fall, or worked on them and made them better, and the track was a second slower. It was nuts. I just couldn’t believe it.
“And I’m like, ‘Well, maybe it’s just — the resin just doesn’t have grip, and there’s just no grip down there, and that’s why we are just so much slower, is that we don’t have PJ1 this time.’ But everyone thought, ‘Hey, once we get all the cars out there, get some heat going, we’re gonna rubber in the track. It’s gonna get better.’ And it’s just never rubbered in.”
So what does Hamlin believe the culprit was? Evidently, the No. 11 wheelman believes someone messed up and put too much of something they weren’t supposed to in the mix for Bristol’s tires when Goodyear made them.
“I am more convinced of that now than ever. I have this plea, to whoever was responsible for the mixture of the Goodyear tires, don’t try to cover it up. Whoever’s in charge a Goodyear needs to go and say, ‘Okay, we’re not firing anyone. We just want to know what happened.’ Because I believe this could be the biggest teaching moment in the history of NASCAR,” Hamlin added. “Whatever they changed in that chemical mixture. So when they’re making rubber, it’s — they’re just they’re making it, right. It’s a formula of this and that and this and that, and they can put little things in it to make it wear. Now they told me at a Texas tire test, there’s something they can put in it that will accelerate tire wear. Somebody knocked over the bottle into the mixture. But you’ve gotta get somebody there to admit. Or maybe it was just an accident. I don’t know, but we need to find out what was different, from that tire in the fall to that tire today.
“So we’re not, we didn’t run any of the last year’s tires. Right? Those tires were used up and gone. They made a new batch. Goodyear made a new batch of tires at the beginning of this year for this Bristol race. But when they made this mixture, someone peed in it. They put something in there that they were not supposed to. Or they put too much of something in this mixture that screwed it all up.”
NASCAR and Goodyear are still trying to figure out what exactly the issue was, but perhaps it wasn’t an issue at all. Whatever was in the tires from Bristols seems to be what drivers want moving forward, and we’ll see if Denny Hamlin and company get their wish.
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