Goodyear brings a brand new tire to Sunday's Food City 500. The 750hp package debuts at Bristol on the same weekend. Kyle Larson is winless in 31 races. Nobody knows what happens next.
By PitByNumbers Staff 5 min read L ast September at Bristol, Josh Berry couldn't see. Smoke had filled his cockpit so completely that he was navigating a half-mile concrete oval at 120 miles per hour by feel. Tire rubber had packed itself around his brake rotor, caught fire, and turned his playoff race into a survival exercise.
He drove seven laps with his car on fire before he couldn't take it anymore. That's what Bristol did in 2025. Goodyear spent the entire offseason trying to make sure it doesn't happen again on Sunday.
Whether they succeeded is a question nobody can actually answer yet — including Goodyear. KEY TAKEAWAYS — What Actually Happened The last four Bristol races have played out like a coin flip that refuses to land the same way twice. Spring 2024: tires fell apart so badly Goodyear had to sell teams extra sets mid-weekend just to finish the race.
Fall 2024: same tire codes, same track, virtually no wear. Spring 2025: Kyle Larson led 411 of 500 laps and turned Bristol into a Sunday afternoon drive. Fall 2025: AJ Allmendinger — the polesitter — was on pit road for corded tires by lap 27.
By lap 40, nearly the entire field had made an unscheduled stop. Three seconds of lap time separated a fresh set of tires from a shredded one. Teams needed sets to survive 50–60 laps.
They were lasting 30–40. Then the fires started. Josh Berry's car went up first.
Austin Cindric's followed later. Berry's team actually tried to keep him out, attempted to extinguish the fire on pit road, and sent him back. "When I slowed down it got way worse," Berry said.
"I was just trying to make it to the pit box so the guys could help me get out because I couldn't see a thing." The race averaged 70 miles per hour. It was the slowest Bristol Cup race since 1974. The night before, in practice, Berry had been fully convinced it would be a different race entirely.
"I was fully convinced it was gonna be hammer down," he said. "The pace during practice was 15.70s, 15.80s. When we're in the 16s that quick in the race, you could tell that's going on." That's the problem.
Practice doesn't tell you anything at Bristol. The track temperature changes, the rubber behavior changes, and a tire that looked fine at 3pm is a fire hazard by 8pm. Goodyear Sr.
Project Manager Mark Keto was direct about why: "We know concrete, particularly Bristol, is very finicky when it comes to track temp on this Next Gen car." Drivers asked them to be aggressive with wear. Goodyear was. Then the temperature dropped and the race fell apart.
What's Different This Sunday Goodyear conducted a two-day test at Bristol last November with Alex Bowman, Ryan Preece, and Bubba Wallace specifically to solve the temperature problem. Brand new compounds — new left side, new right side — engineered to take rubber consistently regardless of what the thermometer says. Director of Racing Justin Fantozzi said the teams "heard loudly" about the practice-to-race temperature swings.
The new tire is the answer. The catch: nobody has raced it yet. Sunday is also the first time the new 750hp high downforce package runs at Bristol — a different power level changes tire load, which changes wear rate, which changes everything crew chiefs think they know about pit strategy.
Legacy Motor Club crew chief Justin Alexander said what the whole garage is thinking: "We're unsure exactly what we'll see so we have to be prepared for anything." That's not hedging. That's the honest truth. Practice on Saturday is the only real data point teams will have before the green flag.
Watch the first 30-lap run. Watch how the right fronts look coming off the car. Watch whether tire temps are stabilizing or climbing.
Everything that matters Sunday gets decided in that window. The defending winner is Kyle Larson. He's been winless for 31 straight races.
The tire nobody has raced is about to hit a track that has humbled everyone who thought they had it figured out. Bristol doesn't care what you prepared for.