There are days when we don’t even discuss the tire as we focus on the racing. Then there’s days like this past Sunday at Auto Club Speedway when the tire becomes the discussion. Many drivers had a problem with the tires throughout the course of the race.
NASCAR VP of Competition Robin Pemberton said after the race that the tires were caused as a result of teams running too low of an air pressure or too much camber in their tires. Pemberton feels that the issues happened because teams were being aggressive.
“I would think that if you’re in this garage area you’re paid to be aggressive and you’d want to take everything to the limit,” Pemberton said. “We know that winning is going to trump everything this year, and I think guys are more aggressive.”
Pemberton added that the Goodyear reps recommended 22 pounds, and there were teams running as low as 14 pounds of air. Race winning crew chief Dave Rogers says that he saw the data that Goodyear released and noted that it showed the lower the air pressure, the more grip – but you increase the risk of a blowout.
“I think we lacked some speed on the stopwatch and I was pretty confident that I could drop left‑side air pressure and pick some of that speed up. I don’t know if I could have got all of it but I could have got a little bit, but it just wasn’t worth it, it wasn’t worth putting the car in jeopardy, putting Kyle in jeopardy,” Rogers explained. “So we played it conservative and today just worked out for us. But maybe that’s the difference. The TRD folks recommended that we’re a little bit higher left sides, maybe some of the other manufacturers are a little bit softer.
“Speaking of TRD, I see David Wilson, like Joe said, that’s a great partnership. They talked to us about tires. They provide our motors. They do a lot of technical stuff for us, so it feels fantastic to be in victory lane out here in Toyota’s backyard.”
It should be noted that the tire were softer than compounds used before, but Pemberton says that was a result of competitors asking for more aggressive tires – tires that wore out over the course of a run to bring tire management as part of the equation.
“At this point in time I think Goodyear, it’s the same tire that we’ve run on in the past. Just the car is a little bit different,” Pemberton commented. “But as always, we’ll get back and we’ll look at it, but right now I think Goodyear has done a pretty good job with it.”
To prevent issues like this in the future, Pemberton says that they’ll evaluate everything from their end, but will not consider adding more tire tests.
Some drivers, notably Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Brad Keselowski, tweeted after the race that perhaps the issues were caused due to the big huge bumps on the backstretch of Auto Club Speedway. While they wouldn’t recommend re-paving the whole track, they suggested ACS works on grinding down the bumps.
