Goodyear's new rain tire could be modified for Cup

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. -- Well before the first raindrops fell at Watkins Glen International this weekend, NASCAR president Mike Helton publicly stated there were no plans in place to run a Sprint Cup road race on a wet track in the near future. But if there was ever a change of heart from the sanctioning body, Goodyear officials said Sunday the Akron-based tire company would be equal to the task.

"We certainly think so," Goodyear spokesman Greg Stucker said. "There's not that big a difference between the two cars and if you go back years ago, we did run them in Japan on the Cup cars. We're confident we could have a package that would be suitable, if that's what they chose to do."

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In fact, Goodyear's newest stock-car racing rain tire, closely related to the Eagle One passenger tire, underwent extensive testing this past November at Goodyear's facility in Texas. They used one of Chip Ganassi's Nationwide cars with Juan Montoya behind the wheel, and from all indications, the improvements made to the tire proved successful.

"We developed a pattern, kind of modified it for our use, then tested it at our proving ground down in San Angelo with Juan," Stucker said. "We're able to run it where we can wet [the asphalt] down and confirm everything what we wanted to see."

"If you look at the two patterns, side by side, you'd recognize the family. But we had to open [the grooves] up a little bit, trying to displace a little more water. But that's pretty much the difference, open up the grooves and make sure we have a little bit larger blocks, because the vehicles are going to put them through a lot tougher pace."

Last year's Nationwide race at Montreal was the first time Goodyear's rain tires had been used in race conditions in one of NASCAR's three major national series, but Stucker said plans were already under way by then to incorporate an updated design.

"We had the second-generation rain tires in the works, even when Montreal came about," Stucker said. "One thing, we wanted to standardize the Nationwide tires with the same size we were running on Cup cars on the road courses. So that was already in the works. But I guess it was good to see the tire in action, because it confirmed our construction, our compound, our first-generation tread pattern. So it reinforced all the work we had done previously and showed us we were on the right path.

"We were very happy. From torrential downpours to puddles and then a little bit of drying condition now and then, I thought the tires performed very well."

Stucker said a number of factors go into the design of a NASCAR rain tire that can be used at a variety of road courses. While Watkins Glen requires a tire that can handle faster corners, Montreal places an emphasis on cornering.

"The biggest thing is what do you want to design for," Stucker said. "We're not going to have an intermediate and a full wet, but at the same time, we realize we're not going to race in a monsoon. So you have to understand under what conditions we're going to race, and understand the vehicle, how much it weighs and what kind of speeds, and try to adapt accordingly.

"If you were designing specifically for those tracks, it would probably lend itself to have a softer rain tire at Montreal than you'd have here," Stucker said. "We're trying to optimize, to have one compound, one tread pattern, so that's what we've done. It has to be robust enough to handle here and Montreal."

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