All the talk this weekend at Sonoma Raceway has been about the track’s repave, and how it’s going to affect this weekend’s Toyota/Save Mart 350.
One of the side-effects from the repave could have to do with tire fall-off. Of course, everyone thinks of what we saw at Bristol Motor Speedway earlier this season, but could we really see something similar at a road course? The idea has been floated around the garage over the course of the weekend.
With that in mind, three of the Cup Series’ top drivers in Brad Keselowski, Denny Hamlin and Chase Elliott spoke with FOX’s Bob Pockrass about the potential tire fall-off, and why they believe it’ll have more to do with the heat than anything else.
Brad Keselowski: “You know, we had one set of tires that was just starting to come apart, so I’m not willing to write that off yet. … You know, this sport loves to play that game, when you think you understand and know what’s going to happen, it does a 180 on you. I didn’t think, you know, when we went to Bristol this spring, in our race prep, we said, ‘Don’t worry about the tires,’ because the fall race, we ran like 200 laps on the same set of tires. We couldn’t make 35. So you know, I think it’s that slope of enlightenment, where you realize the more you do this, the less you know. So I have no idea.”
Denny Hamlin: “Not that we’ve seen, no. It’s typical kind of heat in the tires, what’s kind of making it drop off a little bit in time. But once it cools off, it’ll go right back where it was.”
Chase Elliott: “There actually is, but it’s heat-related. It’s obviously not wear related, at least in the way it feels inside the car. So I definitely think you’re going to be able to hurt it with heat.”
That’s an interesting development for Sonoma Raceway, as it’s shaping up to be a pretty hot weekend for the California-based track. It should cause some interesting strategy decisions throughout the afternoon, even more than we usually would see on the road course.
Regardless, there always seems to be a couple of drivers who figure it out better than the rest of the field under these conditions. We’ll see if it’s either one of the trio of drivers mentioned above, or if there’s an outlier who classes the field during NASCAR’s trip to Sonoma Raceway.
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