A detail view of Goodyear Eagle option tire during practice for the NASCAR Xfinity Series GOVX 200 at Phoenix Raceway on March 08, 2025 in Avondale, Arizona. (Photo by Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images)
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NASCAR News: With Championship on the line, Goodyear tires are exploding in Phoenix

Posted by AR1 staff

The desert sun hung low over Phoenix Raceway, casting long shadows across the 1-mile oval where dreams were forged in rubber and fury. It is championship weekend for the NASCAR Cup Series, November 2025, and the air crackled with the weight of it all.

–by Mark Cipolloni–

Four drivers—Kyle Larson, Christopher Bell, Denny Hamlin, and William Byron—had clawed their way through the playoffs, each one a heartbeat away from immortality. The finale loomed on Sunday, a 312-lap gauntlet where strategy, speed, and a sliver of luck would crown the king. But on Friday afternoon, as the only practice session unspooled under a cloudless Arizona sky, luck seemed to have packed its bags and fled south of the border.

The Goodyear Eagle tires, the same softer compound that had tamed tracks like Richmond and New Hampshire earlier in the season, were supposed to be the silent heroes here—grippy enough to dance through the turns, durable enough to endure the heat. Instead, they were traitors, whispering sweet nothings before deflating like a pooped balloon. Left-side failures, mostly rears, plagued the field from the green flag’s drop. Teams whispered about rising track temperatures baking the rubber, low pressures amplifying the abuse, and the abrasive Phoenix surface chewing through compounds like a coyote on fresh kill. By session’s end, four red flags had turned what should have been a tune-up into a triage ward, with at least six cars sidelined and the pits buzzing like a hornet’s nest.

It started innocently enough, or as innocently as 700 horsepower allows. Barely five minutes in, Chase Briscoe—the underdog in the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, still nursing playoff hopes despite the long odds—felt the telltale shimmy. His left-rear tire, that unassuming circle of black magic, had sliced open on the backstretch, likely kissing the wall just a hair too intimately. The car fishtailed, dragging its underbelly like a wounded beast limping home. Briscoe nursed it back to the pits under caution, the red flag waving like a surrender. “Alarming,” he’d mutter later, his voice steady but his eyes betraying the math: every lost lap was a variable in an equation he couldn’t afford to lose. He returned to the track, only to complain of vibrations that sent him scurrying to the garage for good. The championship dream flickered, but for Briscoe, it was just another scar in a season of close calls.

The chaos escalated like a bad bet at the roulette table. A.J. Allmendinger, piloting the No. 16 Kaulig Racing Chevy, was the first to pay the full price. Early in the session, his left-front tire gave up the ghost, forcing a stop that hauled out another red. But Allmendinger, the road-course wizard with a chip on his shoulder the size of the Sonoran Desert, wasn’t done.

A few laps later, as the field went green again, his right-front flat-tired spectacularly entering Turn 3. The No. 16 snapped sideways, slamming the wall with a thunderclap that echoed through the grandstands. Shards of rubber and carbon fiber rained down like confetti from hell.

Allmendinger climbed out, helmet in hand, his face a mask of exhaustion and exasperation. “I’m ready for this year to be over,” he spat to the reporters swarming like vultures. “Blew a left front, but I don’t know. The first run, we blew a left rear like three laps into it. Everything felt fine… tight, but okay. And then it just all of a sudden blew out of nowhere.” He paused, kicking at the gravel. “To have two left-side tires blow out? We’ve gotta figure out why. We’re not running low pressures in practice—not like that.” Allmendinger’s crash, the third red of the day, left his crew scrambling, piecing together a car that might as well have been assembled with bubble gum and prayers.

Across the garage, the championship contenders weren’t immune. Christopher Bell, the young gun in the No. 20 Toyota, felt his left-rear cut just as the session dared to breathe green again. The car slowed like a heart skipping beats, another red flag draping the track in silence. Bell, eliminated but ever sharp, watched precious seconds evaporate, his engineer barking adjustments over the radio: higher pressures, more camber—anything to outrun the gremlins.

Not far away, Kyle Busch’s RCR squad was deep in their own misery. The two-time champ’s No. 8 Chevy suffered a flat tire midway through, continuing a string of practice woes that had the black-and-red team looking like they’d been cursed by a Vegas oddsmaker. Busch pitted quietly, his veteran cool cracking just a fraction as he eyed the data screens, plotting revenge.

The hits kept coming. Daniel Suarez in the No. 99 Trackhouse Chevy nursed a flat left-rear that stopped the show yet again, only to slice another near the session’s dying embers—but this time, the Mexican road warrior drove it back green, a small mercy in the madness.

Kyle Busch, scraping for points in the No. 8 Richard Childress Racing machine, tagged the wall early before his own left-rear betrayed him, triggering the fourth and final red.

Even Chase Elliott, the quiet maestro, whispered of left-side woes over the scanner. Denny Hamlin’s No. 11 Joe Gibbs crew, sensing the apocalypse, worked feverishly under the car in the garage, their title hopes dangling by a thread of untested rubber.

As the checkered flag flew on the hour-long farce—Ty Gibbs topping the speed charts with a lap that felt like borrowed time—the paddock thrummed with uneasy energy. Teams tiptoed through setups, jacking pressures and tweaking cambers, praying the softer Goodyears wouldn’t unravel under race loads.

Briscoe, clocking a middling 16th, shrugged it off in the media center: “It’s not just us—happening to everybody. We’ve got one practice to sort it, so we’ll adapt.” But beneath the bravado, the math was merciless. Limited laps meant blind guesses for Sunday, where a single blowout could turn a coronation into a funeral.

Saturday qualifying would bring clarity, or more carnage. But as the sun dipped below the Estrella Mountains, painting the sky in blood orange, one truth burned brighter than the desert heat: in Phoenix, with the championship on the line, the tires weren’t just wearing thin—they were exploding, one left-side betrayal at a time.

And in NASCAR, where fortunes flipped faster than a spinout, that made every lap a roll of the dice. The four contenders—Briscoe’s grit, Larson’s fire, Hamlin’s cunning, Byron’s poise—would need more than skill to survive. They’d need tires that didn’t dream of detonation.

The desert waited, impartial and unforgiving, for the roar to resume.