Although Goodyear brought the same tyre combination as was used in last September’s race at the track, it became clear early in the race the tyre fall-off was laying no rubber on the track, which resulted in unusually excessive tyre wear.
Teams quickly discovered they couldn’t go more than 47 to 50 laps before they risked a tyre wearing to the carcass, taking it to the point of losing pressure.
To help manage the issue, NASCAR allowed Goodyear to provide teams with one additional set of tyres during the race but that still caused big changes to the pace of the race and pit strategy.
“We’re trying to understand what’s different, why the track is behaving differently than a year ago,” Goodyear racing director Greg Stucker said during an appearance in the infield media centre late in the race.
“It’s the same package. It’s the same tyre combination. It’s still a bit of an unknown.”
Temperatures in Sunday’s race were within 10 degrees of last September's event, with the only known change being the use of traction resin in the bottoms of the turns rather than PJ1.
However, a visual examination of the track surface after the race showed no areas of rubbering on the concrete surface, regardless of whether the area had been coated in resin or not.
Other than the discarded marbles of used rubber, it was hard to discern that a race had taken place on the track at all.
Source: Autosport