Kurt Busch calls for Indy repaving

Kurt Busch

Kurt Busch has a solution to the tire problem at Indianapolis Motor Speedway — repave the track.

Goodyear Tire Co. has tested extensively since last year's Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, an extremely problematic race for teams in NASCAR's Sprint Cup Series. In the first Brickyard race in NASCAR's new racecar, drivers were unable to compete at speed for more than a few laps without the danger of a blowout.

Busch, who will participate in a 12-team tire test at Indy in mid-June, says repaving the track would ameliorate many of the problems. He doesn't expect that to happen, though, because the much lighter IndyCars perform well on the present surface, and, after all, the Indianapolis 500 is the marquee event at the speedway.

Indy was last repaved in 2004 and treated with a diamond-grinding process in 2005, before the disastrous 2005 Formula One race that saw all teams running on Michelin tires pull out because of safety concerns.

"They need to repave that place," Busch said Friday, after unveiling the Dodge Challenger his foundation will raffle off to raise money for the Victory Junction Gang Camp. "They need to admit they made a mistake and repave it.

"When you diamond-cut a track, it's like running on razor blades. When a track ages, it's like running on rusty razor blades, and that's ugly. But if it's 51 percent one way (toward IndyCars), and 49 percent in the other, they're always going to go toward the IRL." (Note: Firestone has no problem with the surface. Maybe NASCAR needs a different tire company)