Monster Energy Series and Xfinity Series teams will compete on a new tire set-up this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway, hoping to promote natural tire wear and better racing.
Goodyear Racing officials said Tuesday that teams in both series will compete on the right-side rubber that has been used previously at Michigan International Speedway. The move was made to foster traction fall-off on the 1.5-mile Fort Worth track’s relatively new surface, which was repaved and reconfigured in time for NASCAR’s April 2017 events.
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“Texas has been a big priority for Goodyear this year after having held tests there in both January and August,” Greg Stucker, Goodyear’s director of racing, said in a release provided by the tire manufacturer. “When tracks go through a repave and reconfiguration, like Texas did for 2017, it’s important to keep up with the track surface and how it changes over those first several years.
“When we tested in August, with the goal of introducing more tire wear on the smooth surface, we decided upon the Michigan right-side tire for the Cup and Xfinity cars. Michigan also had a repave in the recent past and this tire has done a nice job of generating tire wear there, and will be a good fit for Texas.”
The tire configuration was decided after the most recent Goodyear test at Texas, held Aug. 14-15. Alex Bowman, Kurt Busch, Austin Dillon, Joey Logano and Martin Truex Jr. participated in the test session.
Goodyear officials also indicated that the Texas speedway staff had been prepping the track surface by dragging tires, helping to build up rubber in sections of the asphalt, for nearly two weeks.
The new tire combination will be in place for Sunday’s AAA Texas 500 (3 p.m. ET, NBCSN, PRN, SiriusXM) for the Monster Energy Series and in Saturday’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 300 (4:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN, PRN, SiriusXM) for Xfinity Series cars. The Camping World Truck Series will keep the same tire set-up from its event in June for Friday’s JAG Metals 350 (8:30 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM).