A tough balancing act between safety and racing

NASCAR.COM -- Sometimes trouble sneaks up on you. Sometimes you see it coming. For this two-weekend stint at Lowe's Motor Speedway, however, trouble was courteous enough to make an appointment.

So no one should have been surprised when trouble came knocking, right on time, two Saturday nights ago during the first lap of the Nextel Open. That's when Juan Montoya made a bold / dubious move to pass on the outside. To the astonishment of few, the tires didn't stick.

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At that point, tires had been on everyone's mind for some time. Specifically, I'm referring to the D-4020 compound left-side tires and -- perhaps more to the point -- the D-4022 compound right-side tires supplied by Goodyear.

As racing tires go, these are hard. Very hard. And they've won no popularity contest with drivers, either.

"I hate to talk bad about anybody or bash anybody, but I just have to tell you that I think we've got the worst tires in racing -- period," said a frustrated Greg Biffle after the Coca-Cola 600. "Nobody can drive on these things. They're so hard. Nobody can race side-by-side. It just doesn't put on a good race."

You know the people at Goodyear hate hearing those sorts of comments. Goodyear has been supplying tires to NASCAR for decades and by all accounts, has developed one heck of a solid reputation for manufacturing race tires that are safe, reliable and, most importantly, raceable.

Give Goodyear credit. It's not like they didn't give plenty of advance warning about these tires. In addition to what teams learned about how these same tires performed the night before in the Carquest Auto Parts 300 Busch Series race, or the weekend before in the All-Star Challenge, there was also a two-day test session with these compounds at Lowe's earlier this month.

As if that wasn't enough of a heads up, this was also the exact same tire combination that raced the 600 and the All Star Challenge last year. Plus, this much maligned right-side tire was raced at Lowe's last October in combination with a slightly softer left-side tire to help teams with grip.

Laying the blame for any team's poor performance solely at the feet of Goodyear simply isn't fair. There'd been time to prepare.

But the fact remains, the tires were indeed very hard. When they lost grip, they did it all at once. Last night, side-by-side racing was at a premium. Drivers didn't like them. So why did Goodyear choose these compounds?

Basically, it was the repaving of Lowe's in 2006. The new surface is super smooth and generates lots of grip. That grip generates off heat in the tire that is otherwise scrubbed off in the form of the marbles that collect outside the racing line. But because the track is so smooth, it does not scrub heated rubber off the tire. So the heat stays in the tire.

This is where the choice of a hard compound for Lowe's makes all the difference.

"It generates less heat by the nature of the compound itself. It can stand holding that heat in a little more, so it won't blister or have a problem like a softer compound may if you run lap after lap after lap at those kinds of speeds," said Greg Stucker, director of race tire sales for Goodyear.

"Of course, heat is the enemy of the race tire. So that's what you have to combat," Stucker continued. "That's what we have to design for when we have a repaved racetrack. Add on to the fact that Charlotte is a very fast racetrack anyways, with its configuration, with its banking it's just a fast racetrack."

In winter testing at Lowe's with the same compounds used in October's race, the teams had obviously done their homework. Lap speeds were up and approaching the limits of safety for the track conditions. Plus, NASCAR increased the capacity of the fuel cell used at Lowe's from 13 gallons in 2006 to 18 gallons for 2007. Given all that, the decision was made at Goodyear to keep the hard D-4022 right-side tires, and switch back to the harder D-4020 left-side tires used in May 2006 for the tests and races at Lowe's this May.

"We've got to look at the whole field and make sure we've got a combination that's right for everyone. And like everybody else in NASCAR, we tend to error on the conservative side. Safety is the utmost, and we have to make sure we've got a good safe package for everyone," Stucker said.

So will this combination of compounds return to Charlotte in October? No decision has been made yet by Goodyear.

Safety and racing are in a perpetual battle with one another. Decisions that serve one are usually at odds with the other. For Goodyear to achieve that balance week-in and week-out, especially when lives are at stake, is testament to their commitment to NASCAR and motorsports.

Could Goodyear have developed a tire with better grip that also dealt with the heat as well as those used these last two weeks? Probably. But who knows how much it would have cost to do so? And what if, after testing, it proved to be somehow imperfect? Then we'd still be dealing with tire problems, just different ones. The way it is now, though, at least it's a problem drivers and teams should know how to deal with.

The opinions expressed are those solely of the writer