Goodyear tires continue to be thorn in side

Stock-car crews are still sizzling mad about the Atlanta test of the car of tomorrow two weeks ago: not just because of significant issues with excessive tire wear, but also because NASCAR insisted on going on with the two-day test, even though it knew of potential tire problems two days earlier. "We wasted two days, and wore out our teams to boot," one team manager griped.

Goodyear said that it wasn't happy with the tire problems at Atlanta so it will be testing Atlanta again with the car of tomorrow. And car-of-tomorrow tire tests are scheduled for California Speedway this week, probably with David Green in a Rick Hendrick car, and for Las Vegas Motor Speedway in two weeks.

Goodyear is trying to organize the tire logistics for next season too, because it needs several thousand tires for each Cup-Busch-Truck weekend, and it would like not to have to bring so many different types of tires. So, Goodyear will be testing the car of tomorrow and Trucks together, to try to find a common tire that works.

At Atlanta, when Goodyear put the Truck tires (used in Friday’s race there) on Cup cars of tomorrow, the tires wore so much that teams didn’t learn much at all. And what aggravates stock-car teams is that those tires had already shown issues of wear in Truck practice and the Truck race, and yet NASCAR kept some 40 teams at Atlanta for the Monday and Tuesday test anyway.

“The car of tomorrow weighs more than the Truck, it has a higher center of gravity than the Truck, and it has less downforce than the Truck," one team engineer said. More at Winston Salem Journal