July 24, 2007
By Jeff Murray

Has anyone besides me noticed that NASCAR has gone back to the practice of using hard tires?

Hard tires ruled the years of 2001 to 2003 in the Winston Cup Series. Rusty Wallace was an opponent of the hard tire and finally had an impact on NASCAR with his constant harping on the issue that hard tires were affecting the competition on the track.

Back in 2003 it was Ryan Newman that won eight races due to being able to get a little extra mileage from a smaller carburetor and then gain all sorts of crazy track position when everyone else had to pit and Ryan would move from 20th to 1st and then he'd be able to race to the win because his tires could be 40 or 50 laps older and keep the same speed as those with fresh tires. That essentially was because the old "hard" tires would have practically zero falloff. We had a few years where NASCAR had Goodyear make a softer tire with plenty of falloff on a typical fuel run.

NASCAR and Goodyear started dabbling back into the hard tires when the repaving was done at Lowe's Motor Speedway and then again this year after Las Vegas Motor Speedway did the same. However it seems to me that hard tires rule the roost now at all the races we go to each and every week. This hard tire makes track position once again "king".

A few weeks ago at New Hampshire International Speedway, Denny Hamlin decided on a gamble of only two tires when everyone else took four. His crew chief Mike Ford did this in the name of "track position". Also it was because they were securely in the Chase and they could take a chance. I didn't find it that much of a chance because of the lack of falloff in an older tire.

The last race at Chicagoland "aero push" was exacerbated by the hard tires in use there. No one had any grip except for the leader who would get all the grip he needed by being out in the fresh air. Otherwise it was very difficult for the drivers to run side by side -- or pass each other because of the lack of grip and the potential to lose air off the spoiler -- thus spin out.

Luckily there is more than one groove now at Chicagoland or we would have had a big crashfest. Kind of like we've had quite often lately at Lowe's and had this year at 'Vegas.

For the good of the racing NASCAR needs to get back to softer tires. I know this softer tire will bring speeds up and that is also a dangerous thing, but there are ways to slow the cars down besides a hard tire.

The Car of Tomorrow will create slower speeds by a little bit at the 1 1/2 and 2-mile tracks, but not dramatically. It does seem that these COT's, with the little wing on the back, are more stable and ought to be able to run side by side a little more than the current cars with the 4 1/2 inch high spoilers.

The COT's are harder to turn than the old car, so it seems like having a softer tire on the COT is the right way to go or "aero push" could be even worse with the COT than the current and soon to be former car.

Jimmy Spencer has said the way to make the racing better at the bigger tracks is to have the cars going slower and then a couple of years ago Dale Jarrett made the comment that no one could tell the difference of the cars going into Turn 1 at 205 mph or at 180 mph at California Speedway.

We can make the engine blocks smaller in a typical Cup engine and slow the cars down. Cars now have the same engine block that they did many years ago and now those same blocks that used to turn 600 horsepower now turn 850 horsepower.

It's time for NASCAR to get rid of the hard tire -- for the sake of good racing and slowing the cars down for the exact same reason.

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.