Thursday’s World of Outlaws Bristol Bash open practice was supposed to be a typically quiet evening for competitors to shake down their cars on Bristol Motor Speedway’s imposing dirt-covered high banks. It ended up filled with wall-smashing destruction.

Ricky Thornton Jr. made hard contact with the concrete. So did Tyler Bruening. And Daulton Wilson. And Zack Mitchell.

As the outbreak of metal-bending began to raise fears that perhaps a problem with the tires on the right-front corners of the cars was a contributing factor, Hoosier Racing Tire product manager Shannon Rush made a beeline for the racetrack to assess the situation.

“I got a call from our distributor at the track that guys were cutting right-fronts so I came right here before going to my hotel,” Rush said in the Bristol pit area before the start of Friday’s $10,000-to-win World of Outlaws Morton Buildings Late Model Series program. “I wanted to see what was happening. I’ve seen enough over the years to know what to look for.”

Upon closer inspection of the accidents, Rush was relieved to find that it did not appear to be an issue with the construction of the Hoosier tires. (Event rules allow teams to use Hoosier LM-20 tires with an LM-30 right-rear option for qualifying and heats and an expansion to LM-30s with an LM-40 option for the features.) He examined the right-front tires on the cars involved in the crashes and determined that the Bruening and Wilson cars had clear cuts in the rubber while Mitchell’s tire showed blistering but seemed to be an instance of “the setup and tire didn’t get along.” Thornton’s pounding of the turn-three wall, meanwhile, appeared to result from a broken right-front lower control arm.

All of the crashes were fierce — Mitchell and Wilson saw their weekends come to an immediate end due to frame and other extensive damage while Thornton and Bruening put in long hours with their crews to straighten bent framerails and body panels and replace parts so they could continue racing with the same cars — but the drivers escaped serious injury. The incidents also pointed out how cognizant teams must be about how their setups affect the right-front corners of their cars due to the special circumstances of racing on Bristol’s ultra-fast, steeply-banked .533-mile oval.

As Rush noted about setting up a Dirt Late Model for Bristol, “Everything you normally do, you do backward here.”

Rush said those words while watching cars roll through the WoO officials’ pre-race technical inspection line in the pit area. He pointed out how the right-front wheels of the cars were almost straight up rather than tilted inward (camber was taken out) and the spoilers were laid down close to flat instead of sticking straight up to catch the air for downforce. Since “everybody is so tight (handling),” Rush said, both changes are an effort to loosen the cars’ handling so the machines aren’t so planted to the track surface at the high speeds that create heavy cornering loads, which can dangerously heat up the right-front tires and cause bodywork and suspension parts to puncture the rubber.

According to Rush, he has been “preaching the gospel of Hoosier” to competitors asking for advice on how to keep their right-front tires from overheating or puncturing at Bristol. He’s made air-pressure recommendations, told teams to refrain from siping and grooving the right-front tires (the cutting is normally done to help get heat in tires so they fire better on restarts but isn’t necessary with the heat build-up at Bristol), and suggested teams try using a heat shield to protect the tire from the heat of the engine headers. He also has told teams to double-check the bodywork clearance on the right-front corner to reduce the risk of tire rub or puncture and consider the extra rear end travel cars exhibit at Bristol that could cut a tire.

Competitors seem to be aware that Bristol must be treated differently than a typical track hosting a Dirt Late Model event.

“You’re superspeedway racing here,” said WoO points leader Kyle Strickler of Mooresville, N.C., who debuted a new PPC Motorsports Longhorn Chassis on Thursday. “If you were (NASCAR) Cup racing, you wouldn’t take your Martinsville (short track) car to Daytona, or use your Martinsville package at Daytona. It’s kind of what we got here. All the tricks that everybody does and pulls, you don’t want to do here. You usually want to do the opposite.

“Like, every car in the pit area has got their spoiler laid back. Normally you’re doing everything you can to get that deck in the air, so you’re trying to put the spoiler at optimal angle to get it as high as possible. Here, deck height doesn’t matter. You’re trying to get that ‘parachute’ out of the wind (to loosen the car’s handling).”

Rocket Chassis house car owner Mark Richards, whose driver, Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill., turned the fastest lap in Thursday’s practice with a blistering circuit of 14.955 seconds, noted that teams are “trying to keep the tires as cool as possible here.” He felt that data gained during a WoO practice last month at Bristol was beneficial in helping him devise the correct suspension setup and geometry to alleviate right-front tire heat; in fact, he said he had no concerns with tire temperatures on his No. 1 during Thursday’s hot laps.

Brandon Overton of Evans, Ga., said he understands the key to success at Bristol after competing in last month’s Bristol Dirt Nationals.

“We already came here and we kind of seen it,” Overton said when asked about Thursday’s crashes. “That almost happened to me in our heat the first time we come over here. Mine come apart when we run across the scales over there. Another lap and it would’ve blown out and I would’ve done the same thing.

“We kind of worked on the front ends a little bit, worked on the cars (since last month). Obviously we’re doing different stuff to the tires. You want to do whatever you can do to cool (the right-front tire) off. Like last night … I’d make me a couple laps, and then I’d just run me a couple easy laps, just trying to get my car easy to drive. You can make ‘em go fast, but the thing is, you gotta go fast for 40 laps (in the weekend’s pair of features). You can’t go fast for five and then blow a tire or whatever.”

Overton said Bristol is simply a completely different animal and needs to be treated as such.

“You’re turning so long,” Overton said. “Like, you go down the straightaway here and you literally go through the corner and you feel like you’re in there for a long time. It ain’t like you just go down in there and come back out. You’re turning for a long, long time, and that’s what heats (the tire) up too. If you can get it to just do it for you without you having to turn the wheel, obviously it’s gonna make the tires live a little longer.

“You’re just trying to do whatever you can do to make that thing drive around there as easy as possible. Most of the places we go to, we want ‘em stuck in the ground, stuck in the dirt, just trying get all you can get. Here’s, it’s almost like … it sounds stupid to say, but you almost want a s----- car. Like, you want a car that has no grip. That’s what’s gonna win the race — a car that ain’t got no grip. It’s a little different racing, but it is what it is.”