Goodyear improving Indy tire; work still to be done

Goodyear has tested tires at Indianapolis Motor Speedway four times since last year's Allstate 400 at the Brickyard and plans at least two more, trying to prevent a repeat of the caution-filled debacle that last year's race became from the chosen tire compounds' failure to perform.

The tire company held its initial test in September and then had a 14-car session in October. Four teams tested April 21-22, and another was held last Wednesday as a one-day follow-up. Both April sessions were rain-hampered, with the four teams last Wednesday limited to just an afternoon's practice by rain.

Goodyear's director of race tire sales Greg Stucker said the manufacturer would probably have another test following the May 24 Indianapolis 500 to prepare for a 12-team test scheduled for June 15-16.

'Repave that place'

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 the Sprint Cup Series. In the first Brickyard race in NASCAR's new race car, 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. "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."

-- Sporting News Wire Service

Three of the four drivers who participated in last Wednesday's test said that while they're comfortable and confident in Goodyear's effort to prepare for the July 26 Allstate 400, the manufacturer still has a challenge ahead in developing a tire that can balance the critical elements of wear, heat and performance on the abrasive, flat 2.5-mile track.

"They have to [make the extra effort] because if they don't it's going to be another disaster," Kasey Kahne said. "But I like what I see on how hard they're working on it and bringing all the different teams and working with the engineers at the track and explaining what's going on, and then [the engineers] explaining things to us. I think they've done a great job of trying to tackle it and do it right. They've just got to get it."

Ryan Newman said the test sessions resulted in opposite results.

"We spent the first part of the day cording tires, then the last part of the day blistering tires because they weren't wearing -- we just have to find the happy medium," Newman said. "It's really tough to do with four cars, but I think it can be done."

Still, Kahne said the persistence in testing the compounds showed by the time the testing was finished.

"I thought they made gains -- it was better than the week before," Kahne said. "They started by putting rubber down on the race track, which is something we didn't have last year, so I thought that was good. It still wasn't where it needs to be, or where it's going to be, but I think there were some pretty good gains there with getting the rubber on the track."

Kahne said his longest run later in the day was "15 laps, and I didn't wear the tire out or anything like that -- it just had too much heat in the tire. So that's the next step. The wear issues and all that was gone, it's just a matter of not building too much heat to where you get a blistering problem."

Goodyear officials said they saw the test sessions as a success, but that it's still an ongoing project.

"We were able to make significant progress laying rubber down on the track surface with just four cars," Stucker said. "Having said that, we still have some work to do and some things we'd like to try to enhance overall performance and come up with the optimum tire setup for the Brickyard 400.

"Later in the day, we had all four drivers making mid-range runs of 15-laps, with favorable wear rates and good grip levels. What we're assessing right now is the best way to increase the durability while maintaining an appropriate level of grip."

Newman acknowledged general concern not only over the overheating issue, but also being able to get more life out of his tires.

"I think we ended up doing 18, not consecutive, but 18 laps," Newman said. "Last week it was 10 and you were [done], no matter what. So it was a gain in a number of laps, but the tire life itself is still less than a half of a fuel run."

That was the issue in 2008, when NASCAR was forced to throw competition cautions every 10-12 laps due to excessive tire wear.

"The bottom line is, last year was an embarrassment for the series and the fans and we need to redeem ourselves -- whatever we have to do to do that should be considered," Newman said. "The tires still are not ideal. I know Goodyear is still working on that. It is just a tough situation, man."

As if the variable temperatures and rainy weather weren't providing a challenge, this month has several weeks of IndyCar Series track time for the Indianapolis 500, scheduled for May 24.

"I have confidence," Newman said. "It's going to be interesting to see what the track is like after May, if the IndyCar tires have a good effect or a bad effect or no effect at all on what we do in June to help the race track out. It's just a matter of finding the right tire and right tire combination to go with that asphalt because that asphalt is so coarse and ground that it is difficult."

Added Matt Kenseth: "They've been working really hard and I'm sure they'll come up with some type of solution, but it's been a challenge. The soft tires rubber the track up, but then they blister when you get running too fast. For some reason, the hard tires don't have enough stick to them and they don't stick to the track and they just turn into dust. So it's been a little bit of a struggle.

"I'm not a tire engineer. I'm sure they might have something right now that will run a fuel run, just looking at the stuff that we've been putting on and off our cars. They've been working hard at it and we've been working hard at it, too, trying to help them."