Goodyears Director of Racing, Greg Stucker, had ‘no concerns’ about tyres for the Food City 500

Coming to the Food City 500 Goodyear had 'no concerns' about tyre life after running a successful race last fall at the Bristol Motor Speedway.

Luke Newman

18 Mar 2024

The Food City 500 at the Bristol Motor Speedway provided a challenging race for drivers and teams due to the insane level of tyre degradation during the race.

Throughout the 500 laps, the Goodyear tyres struggled, leading to the release of an extra set of tyres to each driver during the race to ensure all drivers could reach the chequered flag.

After the race Goodyears Director of Racing Greg Stucker spoke to Fox Sports about where Goodyear and NASCAR go from here after the tyre struggles this weekend:

“Obviously this is the same package that we raced here, very successfully, last fall with the goal to generate more tyre wear, which we did then. We ran four fuel stops and everything looked very, very good so we did not have any concerns coming here this weekend.”

He was also asked about what Goodyear and NASCAR will do after the tyre issues this weekend:

“We meet with NASCAR every week and we talk about the previous weekends racing; we do that every Tuesday. We will probably have a bit more of a discussion tonight and understand exactly what everybody saw, and we will go off the feedback from the teams and the drivers that will be very important.”

Stucker was questioned more about why the tyres behaved so differently at the Bristol Motor Speedway this weekend compared to last fall when they worked well:

“That is what we are really trying to figure out. I think there is one difference with the racetrack with the application of the resin, we are trying to understand how much impact that is having.”

Luckily Goodyear did have spare tyres on hand from last fall to give to the drivers in the middle of the race, something that Stucker claims they have on hand at every race in case of an ‘emergency’:

“We always have extra tyres on hand in case of an emergency. Obviously, that is what we had this weekend, so we were able to pull them out so that everybody had the same allotment of the fresh production and one set of tyres from last fall.”