Now that the dust has settled from the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, it’s time to look at the tire situation with an open mind.
There has been a tremendous amount of “mud slinging” because of the tire-wear problem and most of that comes from people that really don’t know a Goodyear tire from a crescent wrench. People often come to conclusions too quickly.
There’s no doubt about the fact that this year’s race wasn’t good. The tire wear created the need for “competition yellows” so crews could change rubber before tires blew out from excessive wear. NASCAR did what it had to do given the situation. It was the right thing and saved a tremendous amount of carnage.
The show wasn’t good for the race fans. They paid money to travel to Indy and see one of the biggest races of the year at the world’s most historic track.

This isn’t the first race that has seen excessive tire wear. It’s been happening since the advent of the racing tire. There’s a fine line between building a tire with enough grip for a given car and track combination and getting the wear required to have what is perceived as a normal race.

Let’s analyze what caused the tire problems that occurred this year.
This isn’t the first race that has seen excessive tire wear. It’s been happening since the advent of the racing tire. There’s a fine line between building a tire with enough grip for a given car and track combination and getting the wear required to have what is perceived as a normal race.
If everything in racing were an exact science, it wouldn’t be very exciting to watch. There have been many races, in all forms of motorsports, where the tire didn’t wear good enough to make it to the end of the race. I’ve experienced this in Indy cars, sprint cars and other forms of open-wheel racing. This race was a worst-case scenario.
It was the first race for the Car of Tomorrow at the Brickyard. The CoT has a higher center of gravity than the previous car and doesn’t have as much offset, or left-side weight bias. It has 40 percent less downforce than the old car and weighs more. These factors are contributors to the wear issue.
What happened? Basically, there was a lack of mechanical and aero grip for the tire design.
Consequently, it appears the tire was sliding across the track surface and not getting into the track. It had an emery-board effect on the tire, grinding the rubber off instead of allowing it to stick to the track surface.
I spoke with Robin Pemberton, vice president of competition for NASCAR, about the issue.
“This caught us off-guard,” Pemberton said. “The right-side tires were the same compound we ran last year. In the past years, we always saw excessive wear for the first several laps of practice, but then the track would start to take rubber and it wasn’t a problem any longer. We expected this to be the same with the CoT. We will fix this situation and it won’t happen again.”
I also spoke with Greg Stucker, Goodyear’s racing director. Greg’s been with Goodyear Racing for many years and involved with all facets of the racing operation.
“The right-side tires had the same compound as in ’06 and ’07. We changed the construction of the sidewall slightly to give the tire more grip.
“We knew there would be heavy tread wear early. This is typical. We expected the track to rubber in by lap 35,” Stucker said. By “rubber in,” he means that the rubber should stick to the asphalt, giving the track a groove. “The fact that the rubber didn’t adhere to the track is somewhat of a mystery that we are working very hard to resolve. We normally test in the spring for this event, but have scheduled tests this fall so we can get a leg up on this situation before the 2009 race. Everyone involved wants to fix this situation.”
Another factor that has magnified this wear problem is that all the teams are rear steering the cars by canting the rear-end housings to help the car stick in the corners. Basically, the rear-end housing is aimed to the left so it isn’t square in the car. When the car’s in the corner, this helps keep the rear of the car under the driver so he can run harder through the turns. By doing this, the car has a lot of yaw down the straightaway.
This yaw creates excessive tire wear. Now consider that Indianapolis Motor Speedway has four straightaways, two of which are almost a mile long, and you can understand where some of the additional tire wear comes from.
It’s a huge challenge for Goodyear to create a tire that will withstand the wear at this unique race track, plus be soft enough to give adequate grip.
The end result was a race that was spoiled by competition yellows in the interest of safety. The mechanical aspect of racing is a moving target and there’s always the chance something can go wrong.
That’s racing.