Goodyear clueless on tire failures at Kansas

Keselowski's bent up car due to Goodyear's exploding tires

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The crew chiefs for Brad Keselowski and Dale Earnhardt Jr. are still confident in their setups at Kansas Speedway, where they each suffered tire failures.

Both drivers hit the wall and now face uphill battles to advance out of the second round of the Chase for the Sprint Cup. Keselowski is 10th in the standings while Earnhardt is 11th heading into the second race of the three-race round Saturday at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Goodyear has Keselowski's Kansas tire — it arrived Thursday in Akron — while it has not yet obtained the tire from Earnhardt's team to begin an analysis. Stu Grant, general manager for Goodyear's racing program, said initial analysis shows that there was an overloaded inside shoulder in the tire but nothing obvious until an extensive analysis is complete.

"It's such a complicated equation, it's hard to tell (why)," Grant said Friday. "It could be camber, it could be toe, it could be air pressure, it could be spring, it could be shock. There's a lot of factors.

"We see an overloaded situation on those two tires. Could it have been a result of a slow leak? Possible. It may not have been anything that the teams did. All that we can do is look at what we have and do an analysis."

For now, it remains a mystery.

"I don't know anything more now than I knew Sunday when we hit the wall," Letarte said.

Neither Letarte nor Keselowski crew chief Paul Wolfe feel they did anything so out of line that they were taking a big chance with the tire.

"There's just no margin left in that tire," Wolfe said. "We saw the speeds maybe a little bit faster in the race there on Sunday.

"There was no previous warnings for us. We didn't change our setting from what we ran in the first race. If anything, we were less aggressive."

The right-side tire at Kansas had been used in the race there in May and also was used at Michigan. Earnhardt's tire wasn't worn through, but as the tire deflated, the top fabric unraveled, while Keselowski's tire showed more traditional inside shoulder wear.

Wolfe said there has been no indication from Goodyear that the tires came from a bad batch in the manufacturing process.

"It's just basically overloading," Wolfe said. "The only things that you can do to help fix that is going to be higher air pressures, maybe needed to have a higher minimum right-front air pressure to not put us in a box like we're in.

"It's hard as a competitor. They always want you to, (by saying), ‘You can run less camber, you can run higher air pressure.' But you can't do that and still be competitive. The only way that can happen is if they bring a different tire or they set the minimum tire (rules) so everybody is playing in the same box."

Goodyear gives teams data after every race, and they already have data from Kansas. The teams have data that shows how much one additional or one less pound per square inch of air pressure will change the durability of the tire. They have already warned teams to be careful with air pressures Saturday night at Charlotte with speeds at a record pace.

"They have got to be aware of the additional load that that speed puts on that right-front tire," Grant said. "The air pressures that you ran in May may not be sufficient to carry that load in the right front this weekend just because they're running a half-second faster than the track record. … It's important that as these guys set their cars up, that they're aware of the additional camber gain that you're going to get with the additional load and you need to watch that air pressure."

Letarte said last week's failure won't change how he approaches the race Saturday.

Can he be more conservative?

"I don't think that exists," Letarte said. "I don't know what that would even entail. Go slower? Charlotte is a fast track that still has repave tendencies, tires are listed with all the other concerns — motors, durability, it's going to be a fast race Saturday night.

"There's a lot of parts on the car that you depend on other people. Tires are one of them."

It was easy to see that the events of last week still stung. Keselowski teammate Joey Logano won the race without a tire issue.

"Unfortunately we were one of the ones that had a bad tire and an issue," Wolfe said. "Knowing where my teammate was and where I was, I don't feel bad about what we did going into that race.

"From that, all we can do is go forward."

Wolfe will feel bad if Keselowski, who has five wins this year, doesn't advance to the next round. Keselowski and Earnhardt are among the drivers who need to rally to either win one of the next two races or be high enough in points to be among the eight drivers to advance.

"It would be really unfortunate to not be able to advance to the next round for something that I feel is somewhat out of our control," Wolfe said. "We have shown we have been one of the best cars over the last few months and not to be able to race for a championship, it will be unfortunate if we don't make it." Sporting News http://www.sportingnews.com/nascar/story/2014-10-10/tire-problems-kansas-dale-earnhardt-jr-brad-keselowski-goodyear