Parker Kligerman on Bristol Tire Wear: "What a Moment!"

Parker Kligerman is an accomplished race car driver. He's a unique talent who began his career in the open-wheel ranks, but at a young age, he moved to stock cars and has blossomed into an underrated talent in NASCAR.

Kligerman, a three-time NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race winner and current full-time NASCAR Xfinity Series competitor for Big Machine Racing, had his chance to collect his thoughts about the high-tire-wear NASCAR Cup Series Food City 500 that took place at Bristol Motor Speedway this past weekend on Wednesday in The Money Lap newsletter.

Kligerman says racing tires are a very difficult moving target for tire manufacturers, due to different race track surfaces, different types of race cars, and in the case of Bristol different traction compounds from one race at the track to another. There's a lot of science to it. And like any science experiment, a conclusion is sometimes hard to come by.

Even three days removed from Sunday's race at Bristol, there are no solid concrete (forgive the pun) answers as to what actually caused the Goodyear tire compound, the same compound used last fall at Bristol, to wear so aggressively on Sunday.

"And this gives you an idea of how damn hard a puzzle this is to solve. It’s Wednesday, at the time of publishing this, and no one is really sure why the tires wore heavily this past weekend," Kligerman states. "There are theories, but no scientific answers—I’m not sure there will be. Unless we come back to Bristol in the fall and have a tire that lasts 100+ laps if you treat it right, and only 70 or less if you don’t. No matter the weather, then we haven’t solved this."

Regardless of the reason, Sunday at Bristol, "...we were graced with some of the most extreme tire wear we've ever seen in the NASCAR Cup Series," Kligerman said.

And this gives us something to keep an eye on as the NASCAR Cup Series heads to another short track -- Richmond Raceway -- in a couple of weeks.

Kligerman says if the sport gets it right, everyone will be, "excited and giggly," and if the sport gets it wrong, people will be, "angry." But either way, Kligerman says it's important not to get wrapped up in the "perfect" level of tire wear.

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Photo Credit: Jonathan McCoy, TobyChristie.com