NSCS: Drivers Happy About Tire, But Wants Improvement To Track Surfaces

Last weekend at the Kansas Speedway, we saw an interesting race with Goodyear’s new multi-zone tire 2.0. The tire company has used this technology on passenger cars for nearly a decade before bringing it into racing. This tire has two unique compounds to allow more traction and endurance.

The tire debated at the Atlanta Motor Speedway last month where it had a lot of success on the older surface. The tire used at the Atlanta Motor Speedway was partially made up of the same tire used at Michigan and outer half made up of the previous Atlanta compound.

Jeff Gordon said the newer repaves the last several years has been the cause of these changes and feels repaving tracks needs to be looked at differently because It‘s a race track and not a highway. He also said the teams had the same issues at Phoenix and Darlington since they did their repaves. Its possible that we could see changes coming to the tires next season at several tracks that’s hard on them.

“I applaud their effort for trying to do this duel tread zone whatever you want to call it,” said Jeff Gordon. "I mean, for me the issues weren’t as treacherous for me. The grip level wasn’t as good as I would like it to be, and the falloff wasn’t as much as I’d like it to be, but some guys seem to set their car up a little freer had bigger issues on the restarts than we did. My car was a little tighter so it would take off halfway decent on restarts. It didn’t get up to speed good but it was at least comfortable.”

Kansas race winner Kevin Harvick nearly said the same thing as Jeff Gordon. Harvick said he feels they keep repaving tracks with stuff that puts the tire company in a box going forward. Though, He likes what Goodyear has developed.

Goodyear has no plans yet to bring this tire to the NASCAR Nationwide and NASCAR Camping World Truck Series races yet. NASCAR and Goodyear will meet sometime today and discuss what they find when they download all of the information.