NASCAR & Tyre Failures

From [www.pitpass.com] :

Months after the Indianapolis debacle at Indianapolis, when seven teams withdrew from the United States Grand Prix, on the advice of tyre supplier Michelin, on safety grounds, NASCAR racers at Lowe's Motor Speedway at the weekend suffered an unbelievable number of failures, causing a number of yellow-flag periods, which, in turn, caused the event to over run.

"This is the biggest joke in racing I've ever seen,'' Kevin Harvick told reporters, after crashing out of the event. "It's terrible. Everybody is out there, knowing that at any moment their tyres are going to pop. It's pretty disgusting and pretty embarrassing for our sport.''

Things were so bad that at one stage, Tony Stewart radioed his pit crew and asked for a renewal of his life insurance policy.

It's now understood that the problem that caused the Goodyear tyres to suffer an inordinate number of failures is down to the track surface, which had recently been smoothed, using the same process used at Indianapolis.

have it!

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Let me get this straight, they still went on with the race with a full grid?

Looks like it, but Dave Ellis would know more than I would. Seems like a major fault with this tarmac smoothing technique. How long before things get re-done properly?

Alot more to the story than that. Teams run the tyres outside the minimum pressures set by Goodyear, so the tyres are obviously going to fail more. The track surface exagerrated the effects definatly, but the fact that the teams abuse these tyres with stupid pressure and camber settings which goodyear tells them not to use means that there is always going to be problems

NASCAR has tyre failures every weekend. Its just seen as one of those things now. ITs almost always caused by teams running below the minimum pressure. Pocono had a total of 21 left front tyre failures over the weekend, all from the same thing.

They also dont mention that the track surface had sped the cars up alot. 193mph was the pole speed (average lap speed) and thats insane speeds. The added speed would rip the tyres up more.

NASCAR started putting in Safety Cautions, every 20 laps, and put out a red flag to clean the track and let the drivers calm down a bit, but this wasnt enough either. Some tyres failed less than 10 laps in a stint.

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I also read that NASCAR decided halfway through the race to mandate a specific tire pressure for all the teams to run. Some drivers bitched about this saying it ruined their setup and strategies.

Ironic isn't it?
Goodyear teams ran this race with tire problems...

Ferrari ran the Bridgestones at the Spanish GP despite the fact they could go any second...

What did Michelin do at the US GP? Oh yeah... they took their marbles and went home...Pussies....



"There are some pikeys there at Turn 10 putting tarmac down - what do you think of that?" - Martin Brundle



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/18/2005 12:43AM by Jagdpanzer.

And goodyear mandating this tire pressure didn't do damned thing. There were still plenty of failures after the enforced pitstops.

Im pretty sure half the teams didnt run the minimum pressures set by NASCAR Anyway as there was no way to check it.

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Yeah, I was about to suggest that tyre manufacturers submit recomended tyre pressure parameters to the regulators. The regulators could then make it mandatory that those parameters are adhered to, and could take out ramdom checks before the start of the sessions.

But as Ellis points out, in many ways this would be utterly useless since the tyre pressures alter out on the track anyway.

And the crews can change them in the pit stops if necessary.

What seemed to happen on Sunday was during the race NASCAR announced the teams would have to keep to minimum pressures. But all the pit stops came during cautions because of the problems and the pressures of course dropped under the pace car. NASCAR couldnt exactly get them in trouble for having low pressures under the pace car so couldnt take action. Completely pointless.

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Reading NASCAR.com, they reported 42 of the 43 cars had tyre problems :|

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DaveEllis Wrote:
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> Reading NASCAR.com, they reported 42 of the 43
> cars had tyre problems :|
>
>

that's horrible!
some people could get seriously injured

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...and who the hell would give life insurance to a Nascar driver ;P

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You must be thinking of IRL, NASCARs safety record in recent years has been excellent.

More news on NASCARs tyre situation. It wasnt tyre wear that was the problem, it was lack of wear. The cars werent losing speed over the run. They would run laps of 185 ealy in the stint and normally that would drop to 175ish, but it didnt, it stayed up at the 185 mark. The tyres were overheating and blistering then suddenly exploding (yes, exploding, not deflating, exploding).

Early in the race when Jeff Gordon got taken out of centention for the race he returned to the track and started scrubbing in tyres for his team mate Johnson because they figured that tyre wear would be better on a set of scufs. But when it was found that the tyres werent wearing at all they stopped that as sticker tyres disappate heat better.

I duno if this was similar to the problems Michelin had, which seemed to be with the tyres sidewall construction. In the NASCAR race it was the tread of the tyre that was blistering.

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looks like a classic case of running too low tyre pressures to me

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so goodyear are basically saying 'our tyres are so damn good that they explode due to lack of wear'

????

Nice dodge Goodyear. The americans may swallow that s*** but not me. I need convincing further.

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you can fu(k up anything if you don't run it properly

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Nice dodge Goodyear. The americans may swallow that s*** but not me. I need convincing further.

what the hell are you talking about? Goodyear didnt say this - the teams did. Its a FACT the tyres were not wearing down and instead just building up heat, blistering then exploding. These are the same tyres that were used all year, and whilst tyre failures are common in nascar, they havent had problems like this before

I agree with TripleM here (bet you never thought you'd see that day TripleM :P ). The teams constantly run the tyres under the minimum pressures recommended by goodyear. That combined with this stupid track levigation made a tonne of problems.

Lowes MS announced the track is going to be completly resurfaced for the next race in May

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ah ha, got ya.

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