Richard Petty Blasts NASCAR Teams for Overreliance on Tire Strategy

Hall of Famer Richard Petty shared his thoughts on the issue he has with NASCAR teams being more focused on strategy in races.

Richard Petty Blasts NASCAR Teams for Overreliance on Tire Strategy

Kyle Petty and Richard Petty (Via IMAGO)

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The NASCAR Cup Series race at Richmond Raceway last week witnessed Austin Dillon producing a dominant run and redeem himself, to secure a place in the playoffs. One of the major reasons behind his success was the effective tire strategy the team used. This didn’t sit well with seven times Cup Series champion Richard Petty.

Talking about this factor in the latest episode of his race week analysis for the Petty Family Racing YouTube channel, the Hall of Famer shared his thoughts. Richard Petty asserted that the teams were more concerned about pit calls during green flag, instead of racing each other. This deprives the fans the opportunity to see the fastest cars dueling upfront.

When they throwed the green flag, everybody said, ‘OK, what are we going to do on tires.’ Not, ‘What are we going to do racing each other?’ … The big deal is when they run a race, I like to see the cars that are the fastest, up front racing.

Richard Petty said, via Petty Family Racing on YouTube.

Further talking about the point, the 200 times Cup race winner pointed out that he wants to see drivers to go all out during the races, and find themselves upfront fighting for wins, not because of strategy but because of pure racing. He highlighted that the fans on the grandstands only cares for racing, as they can’t always follow the strategy.

Not because of strategy, but because the driver and the car got to go race each other and not wait on how you make a pit stop or when everything falls… From a spectator standpoint, you’re sitting in the grandstand and no way you can follow all that stuff.

Richard Petty added.

Richard Petty declares Goodyear is wasting time with tire development

In the same conversation, Richard Petty addressed the change to tires made by Goodyear for the weekend. He highlighted that the option tire for Richmond race has too much fall-off than they should have and accused the manufacture of trying too much to please some teams or driver from the sport with the changes.

Richard Petty
Richard Petty (Via IMAGO)

I think somewhere it’s the drivers and most likely not the owners, NASCAR or the TV or whoever, is telling Goodyear and they’re working their butt off trying to please somebody. Really, they just need four or five kinds of tires and run them the rest of the year. With that much fall-off, it just really kills the race.

Richard Petty said.

The legendary racer highlighted that due to having too much fall-off with the car, the races were getting ruined. He declared that all the investment Goodyear is putting into the sport at the moment is just a waste as their changes is only messing up the races.

If it’s just a second fall-off over a period of time, everybody can adapt to that particular deal. But when you run a tire, and it falls off a second. And then all of a sudden it quits… that just ruins everything. Goodyear’s trying to please somebody, and they’re spending a lot of money and doing a lot of research. I think they’re wasting their time because it really messes up the racing.

Richard Petty asserted.

The comments from Petty seems reasonable and something NASCAR should look into. The Next-Gen car needs fixing, but these changes only being focussed on the tire isn’t the right way to go. It would be interesting to see how Goodyear and the sanctioning body is going to respond to these comments.

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