Goodyear Racing is making a change for the Cup Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway in an effort to minimize the unpredictability.
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According to a press release, Goodyear will bring new left and right-side tires for the NASCAR weekend in Tennessee. This setup is the product of a two-day test at Bristol in November 2025 featuring Alex Bowman, Bubba Wallace and Ryan Preece, as well as a March wheel force test featuring Justin Allgaier.
The goal is to bring a tire that will predictably wear at the short track regardless of the temperature changes that could occur.
"The objective at our Bristol tire test in November was to develop a setup that is less temperature dependent at laying rubber down," said Justin Fantozzi, Goodyear Director of Racing for the Americas.
"We heard loudly from the teams about variations in weather between practice and race conditions, and the need for a tire solution to address this.
"The track took rubber in November under rather cold temperatures, and again at the March OEM Wheel Force test. Our development team did a great job, and we are very pleased to be heading into the weekend with this new package."
The last four races at Bristol Motor Speedway have featured wildly different tire wear. The 2024 spring race had significantly more wear than expected, which led to drivers blowing through tires at a much higher rate than expected. This race had 54 lead changes before Denny Hamlin won.
The 2024 playoff race then had little tire wear as Kyle Larson led 462 of the 500 laps. This race only had eight lead changes. This trend then continued with the 2025 spring race as Larson led another 411 laps. Only four lead changes occurred.
The 2025 playoff race featured more tire chaos, which caught teams off-guard once again. They left the practice session expecting a standard race, but then they began burning through tires. Thirty-six lead changes took place before Christopher Bell won.
Goodyear even began mounting extra sets of tires for the teams during the pivotal playoff race.
The @GoodyearRacing crew is hard at work mounting an extra set of tires for the teams. pic.twitter.com/8oviA7qRtu
— John Newby (@JohnNewby_) September 14, 2025
"Chaos is probably a good word to start with," winning crew chief Adam Stevens said in response to a question from FanBuzz. "The craziest thing to me is after the practice we all had some wear, but not like what we saw today.
"I would have bet my house that it would have been a long-run normal Bristol, run through the stages no problem, and that was not the case, and it was apparent very early on that first run that we were going to have problems. I'm not saying it's not fun to run a race like that, but it would be a little bit more fun if you expected it, and after practice, I did not."
