Photo Credit: Roger Holtsclaw
Many times when the rains come on race weekend and all of the rubber from practice gets washed off the track, it causes teams to scramble to find the right set up. According to several teams early Sunday morning, Bristol’s surface doesn’t change much. Though there will be a slight difference, for the most part it will be business as usual.
Slugger Labbe, crew chief of the Richard Childress Racing No.27 Chevy driven by Paul Menard felt confident that first practice was a good preparation for this situation saying, “The good thing is we all seen it yesterday, it rained Friday night, it rained yesterday morning before first practice, so it’s going to be really hard on left side tires for the first stint, so I have feel pretty sure that NASCAR will have a competition caution on lap 50, I think we’ll probably get four tires around that, but it will be left side tire wear that will be critical for the first 50 laps, other than that the tire wear should be fine for the rest of the day..” Paul was 15th fastest in that practice session, and went on to qualify 5th for Sunday’s Food City 500.
BK Racing crew chief, Todd Anderson, echoed Labbe’s sentiments saying, “It’s obviously going to wash all the rubber off the track, and we kind of just got to look at where we started when we came here Friday morning.”
Kerry Tharp of NASCAR confirmed this morning that there would most likely be a competition caution for the teams today. Most track officials are optimistic that the bulk of the rains will stay north of the track and we will get the Food City 500 in as scheduled.
