March 6, 2010
By Allen Madding
Goodyear brought a new tire to Atlanta Motor Speedway for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Kobalt Tool 500 this weekend.
In the past, Goodyear has battled the aging pavement at Atlanta from tires not having enough grip and cars sliding in the turns to the other end of the spectrum with tires that create a good bit of grip but suffer from premature wear and premature failures. The jury is presently out on how the new tire will perform on Sunday.
When asked about the track and the new tire before Friday’s first practice, Mark Martin said, “This is a great place to race. Goodyear has brought a tire that is going to be an improvement over what we had last fall. This is going to make it even better. The cool weather is going to be favorable for the cars handling, or all the cars handling. This multi-grove race track just makes for a lot of fun. I can’t wait to get started.”
Jeff Burton, who has a lot of experience testing with Goodyear provided his insight, “Goodyear’s hardest job to do is to figure out what makes the best racing.” He continued, “For me I like a tire that makes good grip, doesn’t make crazy grip, but it keeps a fair amount of grip during the run. What I’ve seen is that the racing is better when the tire makes more grip.”
CIA Stock Photos
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What remains to be seen with the new tire is its durability on a long run. Checking wear during practice sessions is all good and fine, but it is almost impossible to predict the wear and durability under race conditions after the tracks has gotten “rubbered up” from all the practice sessions and the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race.
As the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series practices and races, their race trucks lay down a certain amount of rubber on the track surface and as the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series cars practice over the weekend, they also contribute to that rubber accumulation. This accumulation of rubber makes for a black groove around the race track. This adds to the grip of tires on the race cars and race trucks and makes it quite difficult to figure into the tire grip and wear calculation/speculation that Goodyear has to figure out.
Tire testing sessions simply cannot “rubber up” a race track anywhere close to what happens over the course of a race weekend where 40 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race trucks and 43 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race cars are turning laps all weekend.
Goodyear has technicians on pit road inspecting tires on the cars everytime they come off the race track during practice sessions. The teams are monitoring the tire wear, heat buildup, and air pressure buildup as well in an effort to adjust the suspension of the cars to get as much grip and as much balance as they can to give their drivers the best handling race car possible.
In the end, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series teams and Goodyear technicians are all monitoring the tire wear and trying to figure out the tire grip equation, but no one really knows what they have until the green flag flies on Sunday.
The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.
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