Bristol provides chaotic close to first round of NASCAR Cup playoffs

BRISTOL, Tenn. — Austin Cindric could chuckle after a night of managing tires, overcoming a fire and watching a 30th-place finish be good enough to advance to the next round of the Cup playoffs.

“Just another race at Bristol,” he quipped after exiting his scarred car.

Temperatures in the 60s and a new right-side tire dramatically changed Saturday night’s race. Instead of charging, drivers managed tires and tried to get them to last. The result was 14 cautions — nearly double the number of cautions in the previous two Bristol races.

“Crazy race … I’m still processing what we just did,” Chase Briscoe said.

Few foresaw this after Friday’s practice.

“I would have bet my house that it was going to be a normal Bristol,” winning crew chief Adam Stevens said.

He leads the final four laps and holds off Brad Keselowski for fourth win of the season.

About 25 laps into the 500-lap race it started to become apparent that drivers and teams would be challenged in a way they hadn’t expected.

“I had a couple of weird moments inside the car that caught me off guard,” winner Christopher Bell said. “Whenever the track is behaving normally, it’s taking rubber. You can slide the car around and it just feels different.

“I had a really big slip Lap 1 or 2 and Lap 20 or 30 into the run I’m like, ‘Man, I’m losing grip in a hurry here.’ I keyed up (the team radio) and I said ‘I think we might have tire issues.’ And then I just saw the landmine of marbles up the racetrack.”

Goodyear, which has been working to soften the tires at the behest of drivers and NASCAR over the last year, brought a new right-side tire to Bristol. The tire was not tested because of all the work needed to prepare the facility to host a Major League Baseball game in August and the time it took to prepare the facility for this race afterward.

“As that temperature has dropped, it’s returned about what we saw in spring, 18 months ago,” said Justin Fantozzi, Goodyear’s global race tire operations manager, on the USA Network broadcast. “So the tire is behaving exactly like it should.”

The Joe Gibbs Racing driver completed a sweep of the first round for his team.

Drivers were going about 50-60 green flag laps before pitting throughout the night.

“It was learning under fire, that’s for sure,” said Ryan Blaney, who won the opening stage and nearly the second.

With the tire wear, NASCAR allowed Goodyear to give teams an extra set during the event.

“I like this type of racing, just … I’d like to plan for it,” Denny Hamlin said. “You don’t get as much chaos when you plan for it. … Certainly a version of it.”

Toyotas are unbeaten through the first three races of the championship run.

The tire wear also contributed to some fires in the wheel wells of cars. Josh Berry was eliminated on Lap 76 due to a fire that had smoke bellowing through the car on pit road. He said he thought the fire was the result of tire rubber or cords wrapping around the rotor or brakes.

A similar thing happened in the right front of Cindric’s car at Lap 454. He was in a good position to advance at that point but then fell to five laps behind the leaders as his team extinguished the fire and replaced the tire.

“As crazy as it sounds, we were fortunate (Berry) had the same problem because I think the lesson learned there was try to minis the laps run (with the fire before pitting),” Cindric said. “The moment I smelled something, I said something and confirmed it and pitted and the guys were ready.”

That allowed Cindric to beat Alex Bowman by 10 points for the final transfer spot to the second round. Berry, Shane van Gisbergen and Austin Dillon were the other playoff drivers eliminated Saturday.

“Certainly sucks to not transfer, but our back was against the wall coming in here,” Bowman said. “We knew it was going to be a tough thing to do.”