Successful or not, rain tires aren't option for Cup -- yet (cont'd)

"The idea is to keep as much of the [tire's] contact patch hooked up to the racing surface as possible, versus hydroplaning," Heinrich said. "The aqua-channels that are designed into the tread pattern are directional, and it creates a pumping action that pushes the water to the side as it rolls down a wet racetrack. If it's mounted in the wrong direction [as Scott Pruett's Ganassi Racing team almost did at Montreal], it would push the water to the center of the tread and create hydroplaning."

Heinrich said the rain tires used in Montreal were produced in 1999, and were stored in a climate-controlled environment that would prevent their deterioration. After using rain tires at Montreal, there was a good supply "in inventory" to replenish the stock for WGI.

"We shipped in right around 300 additional tires to bring our inventory back to the 600 level," Heinrich said. "We were pleased with how they worked in Montreal, and we got good feedback from the teams. We feel like, given the proper conditions, that they would work equally as well at Watkins Glen."

Making history

Ron Fellows put his name in the record books as the winner of NASCAR's first points race run on grooved Goodyear rain tires.

• Fellows wins on rain tires
• Aumann: Tires a success
• H2H: Rain tires all the time?
• Experiment gives high hope

Goodyear's first version of Cup rain tires, which were hand-grooved slicks, were created for NASCAR's exhibition events at Japan's Suzuka Circuit and were used there in 1997, the second year NASCAR ran there before moving to the Twin Ring Motegi oval for one try in 1998.

Rain tires were used for an official Craftsman Truck Series practice at Watkins Glen in 1999. At the 2000 Cup event, NASCAR offered drivers the opportunity to test rain tires in an unofficial session and several took them up on it, including Mark Martin, Robby Gordon, Todd Bodine and Jeff Burton. Dale Earnhardt also tested the tires at The Glen, but they were never used for an official Cup practice.

"At the time we designed and built these tires, we had quite a history in Indy car and sports cars," Heinrich said.

A provision to use a rain setup was in Cup entry blanks until the 2007 season, when it was dropped. But the decision was never made to attempt it.

Pemberton said NASCAR opting to use rain tires in the Nationwide Series was a simple choice.

"When you look at the Nationwide side, it's about logistics as much as it is anything," Pemberton said. "It's about being in Mexico and having to get to the next race weekend, when you have a Sunday event [the road race in Mexico City]. It's about getting people in and out of that country and the schedule being so tight.

"I think if you look at everything we do to put on a race, whether it's rain or shine, there are some fans that can stay until Monday or Tuesday and wait for the next clear day, and then there are some that can't. So while they're all here, we put on the best show that we can under that set circumstances. You could say that it would be a better race in the dry, but if you're racing in the dry with 60 percent of your fans here, is that better? It's a toss-up and you can look at it a lot of different ways, but we just chose to run in the rain and we've had the plan to do that for quite some time."

Pemberton said his view of Montreal was "mixed."

"We're basically flying blind right now and the only way you get better is to practice, to do it and adjust and learn from something," Pemberton said. "We took a lot of things for granted, like some of the guys' taillights worked better than others. There's some equipment that's better and some of the teams did a better job with it [than others]."

Many Nationwide teams that were checked at Watkins Glen said they had better defoggers and wiper systems than at Montreal. Jason Leffler said his Braun Racing team had windshield wiper assemblies mounted both inside the driver compartment as well as outside on the windshield.

Pemberton said learning on the fly was business as usual for NASCAR.

"Here's my opinion on it," Pemberton said. "You can say it's a work in progress and you can say you learn as you go, and some people that want to be real critical will say you should do better and you should know that [already]. But the bottom line is, we learn as we go every day, at every race. We do things differently today than we did two years ago -- or a year ago. Everywhere we go, there are things we pick up on and we do better in all aspects of running the race, and the guys with the racecars. Every time we run a race and we see some circumstances arise that we couldn't predict and didn't know would happen, we go back and say, 'Let's fix this' -- and that's under dry conditions."

Pemberton said running in the rain was the same, and he stressed that "it's something that's tough to test for, because you don't load up when it rains and go to the airport runway and run up and down.

"At the end of the day, what's the difference if you run a two-minute lap or a 90-second lap?" Pemberton said. "It's still a race. It's about the competition." (Continued)