Goodyear and NASCAR: The Chicken or The Egg?

Last weekend’s Atlanta race wasn’t just dull, it was atrocious. While in some people’s minds the big story was Toyota scoring its first Cup win, the post-race talk wasn’t about Camrys, it was about Goodyears.

You might think that having finished second to a teammate, Tony Stewart would have emerged from his car grinning ear to ear. You might have thought that if you didn’t know Stewart, that is.

Rarely one to shy away from controversy and, in fact, one who frequently instigates it, Stewart emerged from the 20 car and gave the Goodyear Tire and Rubber company a corporate ass-chewing unparalleled in the history of stock car racing. Sure, other drivers have bitched about the tires before — it happens all the time — but Stewart raised the debate from merely caustic to nuclear, calling on Goodyear to show a little pride and get out of the sport all together. While other drivers were more politically correct in their comments and tone concerning the tires, they agreed that the tires just weren’t suited to the new cars and the track that day which led to a miserable race both for competitors and spectators alike.

I’ve talked to some fans who think the drivers need to shut up and do what they get paid to do… race. They point out that the racing resembled “the good old days” in that the cars were sliding around like enthusiastic Golden Retriever puppies hitting a freshly waxed linoleum floor. That meant the drivers actually had to get up on the wheel and drive the cars rather than just steering it around the racetrack. As a long time fan who remembers the epic battles between Tim Richmond and Dale Earnhardt running hard, wide and handsome while dirt-tracking every corner, I feel some sympathy towards the argument the drivers need to race rather than cruise. But Good Golly, Ms. Molly, Atlanta was nothing like the good old days. The trick to drivers piloting loose racecars is to have them do so in proximity to one another, not separated by several second gaps as they strain to keep from wrecking each lap. I’ve been to pinewood derbies with more drama than the Atlanta race. Whichever driver got out in front enjoyed the benefit of clean air on the nose of his car and could drive away to a five-second lead in 10 laps.

So what went wrong? Did Goodyear bring an inferior product to Atlanta that stunk up the show, or does the new car (once labeled the Car of Tomorrow) require a tire so hard that the only side-by-side action we’ll be seeing this year is on pit road and the plate tracks?

Certainly the teams are still trying to sort out these butt-ugly standardized abominations of racecars NASCAR has foisted on them. To date it seems the only way to get the new cars to handle is to put a big old right rear spring out back and to run the front suspension in “coil bind.” (To whit; to keep the front splitter on the ground and glue the front wheels to the track, teams use a shock/spring package that allows the front suspension to collapse to the point that there is effectively no front suspension left.) The new setup is so tough on a car that we’ve even seen control arms bend or break on the rougher tracks. And of course anytime a car isn’t handling, there always a temptation to lower the air pressure or dial in some more right side camber. A set up like that is brutal on tires — particularly the right front. Naturally, Goodyear isn’t eager to have fans who are potential customers witness a race where right front tires are popping like Orville Redenbacher’s finest, so it is bringing a tire so hard Fred Flinstone would reject it for use on his daily commute to the quarry.

Several people smarter than me (who incidentally get paid a lot more than I do as a result) on the teams have told me that the new car design, flawed as it is, could be saved if NASCAR would simply allow the teams to extend the nose out a few more inches to get more downforce on the front of the cars. That would allow the teams to go back to more conventional front suspension setups that would, in turn, reduce the load on the right side tires. At least in theory that would allow the drivers to run their cars two- and three-wide without risking an incident like the one at Las Vegas that saw Jeff Gordon slide up the track into Matt Kenseth, triggering a final lap accident. (So for all the talk about how the innovative safety features incorporated in the new car helped save Gordon injury in that savage crash, it just might be that the same new car was responsible for the crash happening in the first place.)

Right now NASCAR and Goodyear are nose to nose and neither will blink. NASCAR won’t scrap the Car of Tomorrow program — or even modify it — and as long as the new car design is so tough on tires, Goodyear isn’t about to bring a softer compound to the track. Stewart might have mentioned the new cars’ fault in Sunday’s disaster but he found out last year that NASCAR doesn’t respond well to criticism.

So right now that’s where we’re at. NASCAR won’t admit the new car is a bad idea and Goodyear isn’t going to bring a racier tire to the track until they’re sure it can hold up to the stresses of the news cars. Perhaps eventually the teams (NASCAR always prefers the teams spend the money to solve a problem as opposed to the cost come out of its corporate coffers) will find a new suspension setup for the cars that allows them to handle in race conditions without brutalizing the tires.

Until then, we as fans are likely to be subjected to a lot more stupefying, brutally boring parades poses as races. If you thought Atlanta was bad, just wait until the series reaches Darlington in May.

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