Goodyear plans to work with NASCAR to resolve Indy tire issues
Quote selected text Published July 27th, 2008 in NASCAR News
Goodyear officials will most likely test at Indianapolis Motor Speedway before this year ends in an effort to remedy the tire problems that marred Sunday’s Allstate 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup race at the track.
After Dale Earnhardt Jr., Mark Martin, Carl Edwards, Matt Kenseth and Juan Pablo Montoya each had tire problems early in the race, NASCAR officials opted to continue to use competition cautions to check the tire wear. The sanctioning body had announced prior to the race plans to throw the caution flag on lap 15, then continued the practice throughout the event, with the final competition caution coming on lap 150.
Goodyear officials said that the combination of the Indy track surface and NASCAR’s new car caused the tires to wear quickly and that they’ll look into the problem.
“Obviously, the tread wear didn’t improve as we thought it would for the first of the afternoon,” Goodyear spokesman Greg Stucker said. “Actually we don’t have the answer as far as why that didn’t happen, so we’ve got to go back and look at that and try to figure out how to make it better.”
- Speed to air program on tire problems at Indianapolis
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- Stewart blasts Goodyear once again
- Goodyear to conduct COT tire test at Daytona
- Goodyear, striking workers reach tentative deal
Dear Goodyear,
Make a harder tire.
I’d much rather listen to drivers complain about hard tires
than watch a caution be thrown every 10 laps or tires shread race cars.
Also, please accept you screwed up instead of admitting you just are making
a careless product.
(You’ve had last year, Pocono, and 2 tests at Indy to ‘learn’ what the new car needs)
This is just another occasion in a series of events where tires have absolutley ruined the racing
experience.
Sincerely,
A fan who wasted money watching that race.
you know you can watch speed at anytime from people who race F1 cars to sprints, to off road truck to rock climbers and tires are never this much of an issue, and you know what else i notice none of these other events run BADYEARS, someone at nascar is gettin paid to keep these jabrones in the sport and they are getting worse and worse, and the only person who would speak up against was smoke and goodyear put the gag order on him step up goodyear youll suck thats was the worst race i have ever seen in my life
Goodyear wanted to do a full field tire test earlier in the year.
Teams and Drivers wanted to do a full field tire test earlier in the year.
NASCAR said No we’re gonna test at Pocono and use that data for Indy as well.
Rowdy about the F1 thing, Ironically enough Indy and tire troubles is one of the main reasons that now F1 only has one tire supplier.
About the other forms of racing you mentioned, the thing is you never hear about tire problems because the drivers shut up and drive. Also you mention Sprints and Off-road trucks, Tire-Wear isn’t as much of an issue if forms of dirt racing as it is asphalt.
As usual the nascar gods screwed up again.
Fisha
I agree with you in other series tire wear isnt that much of an issue but, the fact it all tires in any series go through extremes and it seems other series if they have these issues they correct and thats it, but in nascar its a week in and week out issue, i think they should let TSL make the tires, ive never had an issue woth my boggers or thornbirds plus i think it wouldnt hurt to give a cup car a new look lol
They are indeed some jabrones.
This was not Good Years fault, the track is the problem. you cant diamond grind a track and expect to have a racing groove no matter how many laps you run. the right rear on these new cars have to much bite and on a track surface like Indy it just turns the wear to fine particles and does not fill in the track. we saw how fine it was by just looking in the cars after the race and up against the wall. but you cant blame the tire or Good Year. they just have to test more.
The question remains how long did goodyear and Nascar know of this potential problem?? Was the track Diamond cut when they tested??
testing us up to nascar not the track, the track does whats best for its facility and of the other series that race there they dont have this issue, and BADYEAR should step up and tell nascar it could be an issue and that testing needs to be done, this has nothing to do with nascar or the track, thats blaming pepsi for the foam cups leaking at the track
Busch, Vickers, and Dale did the test back in April and you cant judge a 2 day tire test to a 400 mile race.the track was ground last year. they just have to iron out the wringles with the COT. it is not Good Years fault, it is the way the geometry of the new car is set up. before you go blaming Good Year you better know your facts. we never had a bad tire until the COT and the teams started playing with the way they are mounting the rear ends.
BADYEARS
still suck smoke said it at the begining of the year, and his point is proving true, why would badyear even hold a 2 day test if it was going to be pointless once again for them to hold a test and no have any results is a waste of the teams time and money that showed up
That was not a race…it was a joke! If I was a fan that paid good money to be there….I would be demanding a refund.
this has nothing to do with Tony, it has to do with the COT, no one cares what Tony has to say, he acted like a child that day too. you just dont get it do you? we never had a problem until the teams started toying with the rear end setups and that is why when the car goes down the straight aways you think the car is sideways but its the way the rear end is set up so you can blame alot on the teams for this.
actually smoke had some of the best tire wear probably because him and zippy didnt trust the badyears, and badyear should be aware teams are going to change the settings thats there jobs to make there cars the best and BADYEAR cant keep up
you know you have something to say about everything. Good Year has been in this sport over 50 years and never had a problem until Atlanta of this year. It is not Good Years fault that NASCAR came out with a car that puts increased loads on the right-side tires. The 3 other tires were fine so that just goes to show you that it is not their fault, they didnt design this car and as far as Good Year catching up. well they just look at the data and whatever that data says that is what the teams get. we have been running at Indy since 1994 and Good Year always brought a safe tire.
ROWDY BUSH wrote:
I read a report somewhere that Goodyear wanted to do a full field test at Indy and nascar said no they would do it at pocano so it is nascars fault for not listening to Goodyear.
ok since you want a debate what you are saying if its not badyears fault cause of the new car then your saying its nascars fault am i right with this assumption, cause someones to blame for this mess today????????????
BADYEAR
should still man up and tell nascar hell no we dont have a tire for this and if nascar disagrees then they should over compensate to be safe they did neither
your right about that but nascar would just go to another supplier to get what they want.
either way they had a test BADYEAR either had good or bead results and it seems they didnt do much with test info wasting everyones time i think they should open it up to other suppliers to make badyear step up or step out
well they will have to wait until after 2012 because that is when the contract is up, and you wont see it happen then either.
ROWDY BUSH wrote:
Actually at the test they had the three drivers, Jr Kurt, and Vickers, and they all agreeded that they did not want Goodyear to bring back a harder tire.
Also here is a picture of what Diamond Grinding looks like, It’s not Indy but it’s a road somewhere with Diamond Grinding. http://www.thetranstecgroup.com/uploads/rob/blog/GE02-C-Photo.jpg
Fisha, that is exactly what the surface at Indy looks like. and thats why it is so hard to get rubber into those grooves. people dont understand, they just like to blame anyone they can without knowing what the facts are. the COT has had problems because of its lack of downforce and its high center of gravity,and other things that made it very hard on the right side tires. Richard, Rick, and Joe all agreed when interviewed that you cant blame Good Year because alot of it is the COT and the fact that the Nationwide or Truck series didnt race there before the Cup cars.
oh, and lets not forget to blame the teams too, who told Good Year that they didnt want to waste a test date on a track they only visit once a year.
and as far as ROWDY why dont you just quit with the BADYEAR, Im sure people get what you were trying to say.
Okay.. so the track had the grinding done LAST YEAR according to an earlier comment.
Why did IRL not experience tire wear issues? they load the tires up as well.
The F1 issue at IMS was Michelin brought a compound that was alot softer than they should have brought. and I would definitely compare that complete fiasco to Sunday’s Nascar ‘race’ imo the fans were screwed over by just the Bridgestone cars running then and were screwed yesterday by the ridiculous amount of ‘competition cautions’
they talked about maybe having to use Pocono tires since they were eating the Indy compound ones so quickly, the Pocono tires were/are softer according to what the announcers were saying. that would have been a great situation right?
Would having the Nationwide and Trucks run at IMS have helped this issue any? it would have put vehicles running at speed on the track more often.
I didn’t see the race, but why didn’t Nascar realize this early in the weekend and quickly mandate a few aero changes to give them more downforce? Diveplanes and wing extensions are easy to make and install, and would have helped tire wear drastically.
Maybe Nascar needs to rethink going to Indy if they can’t make the new cars work on that type of grooved surface. Either that, or major changes need to take place in order to get those cars working properly (ie. not destroying tires in a matter of minutes). They’re still a basic front-engine tube-frame car with 15×12 radial tires… same basic design as the old car that worked just fine… so a solution must exist.
DRACHEN
Your right IRL cars didnt have any issues and the track was ground up last year, also BADYEAR did a tire test which obviously was a complete waste of time because they didnt even take the advice from the drivers who did the test, we have other tracks that have been ground up and the issue was never thiis bad, bottom line is testing was done this was not a surprise to BADYEAR, all they managed to do was waste peoples time for testing from the people to the track to the teams who did test, it was a joke a crappy race and and like when smoke spoke up now that BADYEAR has bad press they want to step and say they are going to make a change.
Howie Motorsports Photography wrote:
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I wonder if the truck series and the nationwide series had raced at indy would it have made a difference? I think it would have but who knows. Also, should Indy do something about the surface of the track? Other tracks have tried to make changes when similar events occurred.
It is the COT! It has too many physical issues to not have tire issues at some tracks. Indy is one of them. Loved what Derek Daly said on WISH-TV in Indy last night. It is NASCAR’s fault because they have a poorly designed car and it is Goodyear’s fault because they knew they had problems in April when Dale Jr. wore them to cords in five laps! They both knew the track had diamond grinding and knew the data after the test in April so they both screwed up. I was there I endured this big debacle! I have been to many races at IMS and this by far was the worst. I may not go back next year and elect for the Moto GP that is coming. This wasn’t a race yesterday it was a DEMONSTRATION to see who could sprint hardest for 10 laps. What a mess.
Well, let’s see. They didn’t grind the track an hour before the race. They tested tires here and thought the tire was good enough. But during testing, they didn’t have ANY problems after 8-10 laps like they did during the race? Goodyear hoped the situation would get better? Is that how we’re supposed to understand this mess? As I said earlier, with all the resources NASCAR and Goodyear have, they should be ashamed for putting on a tire test and calling it a race. Poor Kenseth. His car looked like a funny car exploding for crying out loud! It’s very fortunate that no one was really hurt or worse during this bizarre event. We can only hope it gets better. You can never compromise safety in racing but it looks like NASCAR and Goodyear got a free pass on this one.
Howie.
Never had a bad race with the old car ey?
Charlotte 2005 was pretty bad.
And you can’t shift the blame from Goodyear
Considering bridgestone in f1 and firestone in indycar
Have managed to bring tires that last and put on a god show
For the past however many years.
Drachen wrote:
Indy car tires have wider contact patches, and remember those cars are lighter.
Drachen wrote:
Not really, the track just needs to be repaved Again. They did the Diamond Grinding in 2002 (I think it was 2002), and they realized that it was a stupid, so they repaved, but then they changed their mind again and did the Diamond Grinding again.
This was ridiculous and the fact that the only people outraged are the fans that gave up 4 hours of there lives
watching NASCAR safely control a race. This was not race and is was much of a debacle as F1 US Grand Prix a few
years ago. I expected harsher words from the Drivers and I guess that little meeting a couple weeks ago kept them
quiet
they may be lighter but they generate 4000lbs+ of downforce and run 20 to 40mph faster which i would imagine equals things out between the forces Nascar tires see and IRL tires see..
this issue is all on Goodyear and Nascar. regardless of who they attempt to blame. the IMS surface has been grooved since before this seasons racing there. both of them knew this. they apparently only tested with 3 cars there and saw no issues then. what explains that? did someone at good year screw up the rubber formula for this weekends tires?
I gotta say, after watching this race yesterday, having a day to rationalize it, and then reading all the comments here, that regardless of what anyone says this was a combination problem with Goodyear and NASCAR, but I’d shift most of the blame on Goodyear. If Junior was wearing tires to the cords in 5 laps in April tire tests then regardless of what the drivers said they should have brought a harder tire. As mentioned above, this isn’t Goodyear’s first goof as Charlotte 2005 was a disaster, and honestly there’s almost always at least one race a year that the tires are an issue whether it be too hard or too soft.
That being said, NASCAR should have allowed more testing, and teams should have accepted it knowing the problems in the limited amount of testing that they had.
Being a Jimmie Johnson fan, I was happy with the result of the race, but the race itself was crap, one of the worst I’ve seen in years. This is as much of an embarrassment to NASCAR as the All-Star Race when half of the field wrecked on the first turn of the first lap due to a wet track. I think the competition cautions were the best solution since they didn’t have a harder tire on hand at the track, but it definitely dulled the race up.
The stats show that the fastest car won the race, and I’m honestly not convinced that the end result would have changed even with a tire that lasted 100 laps. I’ve heard the pole/pit stall argument, and my response to that is that there is a reason that Jimmie got the pole and the first pit stall…he had the fastest car. As for Jimmie being “stuck” behind Denny Hamlin, I disagree. Jimmie almost always lays back “saving his stuff” until the last few laps once he gets in front and sees exactly what his car is capable of. That’s just how Jimmie seems to like racing. He might have had a bit of an aero push, and they said that those tires didn’t react well to his setup, but I strongly believe that if Jimmie had really wanted to push it he could have passed Hamlin whenever he wanted to.
Hopefully after two years of tire problems at Indy, NASCAR, Goodyear and the teams will work together to get the proper amount of testing, and a hard enough tire to make for a better race next year.
Jimmy told everyone today that he was running at 85% the whole race and that Chad could have turned up the heat on the competition but didnt see the need to. Everyone said today that the finish would have been the same in the end if it had ran green for the last 50 laps.
It doesnt matter who won it was still a horrible race, best I hear was a fan who said he took his wife and she wanted a souvenir so he went and tried to buy her a caution flag, also i wonder if Bodine gets any bonus points for leading the most laps
Thetru7h wrote:
Answer please mr all knowing howie?
Thetru7h wrote:
Yes the race at Lowes was not the fault of Good Year back then either.
When Lowes seen how “levigating,” or grinding, had been succesful at Indianapolis Raceway Park and Kentucky Speedway, Humpy was looking for the same results at Lowe’s. But it didnt happen. The Coca-Cola 600, one of the circuit’s crown jewel races, was marred in 2005 by caution periods totaling 103 laps, or more than a quarter of the race. Just 20 drivers–less than half the 43-car field–were on the lead lap at the end of the 5-hour, 13-minute marathon.
If at first you don’t succeed, grind, grind, grind again …
By the fall race at Lowe’s, little had been done to fix the track. Wheeler ordered more levigating, this time to the front straightaway and the upper lane by the wall.
Drivers who tested the track in 2005 described the smoother surface as “wicked-fast.” But the consequences of testing on it were more than wicked for Tony Stewart and Greg Biffle, who were in the thick of the Chase for the NASCAR Nextel Cup at the time. They lost two cars apiece to crashes. When drivers climbed anywhere near the high line, their cars skated into the wall.
The testing foreshadowed what would happen in the UAW-GM Quality 500 four weeks later. With such a short time between testing and the race, Goodyear was unable to develop a tire that would work better on the track. The result was a wreckfest that included 17 tire incidents and forced NASCAR to consider shortening the event for safety reasons.
The sanctioning body called for a competition caution at Lap 200 to verify that drivers were using the minimum recommended air pressures. By then, it was too late for Kevin Harvick, who described the race as “the biggest joke in racing that I’ve ever seen … It’s pretty disgusting and pretty embarrassing for our sport.” Those were much harsher words than NASCAR president Mike Helton’s–he referred to the 4-hour, 11-minute debacle, which included 15 cautions for 81 laps, as “unusual.”
It was then that they found out that no tire could stand up to the deep rigid groves that were grinded into the track and just decided to repave it.