NASCAR

Tires, tires, tires.
Goodyear and the tire situation are the main talk at Bristol Motor Speedway right now.
Tony Stewart’s comments following last week’s race in Atlanta created a storm, and seemingly every driver who spoke with the media on Friday morning was forced to answer tire questions.
How valid are the questions?
Based off the drivers’ diverse answers, very valid.
The general consensus is that Goodyear was backed into a corner. They had to address a situation, made a decision, and the decision was obviously met with mixed results.
Yet not every driver shares Stewart’s no-nonsense opinions.
Most of the drivers who spoke on the issue stressed that safety was the key, and that a medium ground was to be found somewhere between the tires that were used at the Daytona 500 and last week’s debacle in Atlanta.
Kurt Busch provided substantial insight. Busch turned a question on the state of the Car of Tomorrow into a referendum on Goodyear and its tires.
“You’re turning the wheel harder, you’ve got all this camber built in, it’s a heavier car – it’s a recipe for tire issues,” Busch said.
“Goodyear has to react. The CEO can’t get these phone calls from moms and pops watching NASCAR races, going, ‘Why are these tires blowing out? I have Goodyears on my SUV that I bought. Why are NASCAR race tires blowing out?’ So they have to react. NASCAR and Goodyear came back with a harder tire for Atlanta. Yes, was it a bit too far? I’m sure it was. Is there a compromise to find a middle ground? I’m sure this. Now, that’s a problem for them. The racing action. We want to see the action, we want to see the safety, and we want to see the fans go home and say, ‘I bought a ticket in Atlanta, Bristol, wherever, and it was a great race.’ And so, they’re doing the jobs that they can, and they’re giving us the best tires that they possible can to put on a good show, as well as not put the heat on themselves when there’s tire blowouts.”

Posted by Brian T. Smith
NASCAR

Highlights from Ryan Newman’s (No. 12 Alltel Dodge) press conference on Friday morning at Bristol Motor Speedway

On Goodyear and the tire situation:

They tried to hit a middle road with the two options they had. One felt really good, wasn’t going to last; the other didn’t feel so good, and was going to last too good. So, we worked with Goodyear and three teams that were there, we’re go back, do another tire test, hopefully a short, abbreviated test, so that we can prove the tires are ideal for the track.

On the new track at BMS:

The track is great – I like the old track better; don’t get me wrong – but the track is great, they did an excellent job to basically replicate what was there when the repaved it, in the essence that it’s super smooth, the transitions are the same, it’s got a ton of grip … it’s really fast. We ran a 28.12 on what was called the control tire and that’s, like, three seconds faster than the old race trim. So it was super fast. You really have to be on your toes. Turn two wall is about four foot taller now when you come off turn two … it just feels like it. Um, the track, everything drives the same, other than the fact that you can go up and flip a tire.

On coming back to BMS:

I thought they did an excellent job in making this a better race track. From my standpoint, it drives like a three-wide … like a Michigan, in a roundabout way. It’s a lot of fun to race. You can move around. It’s going to take some time for it to move up towards the wall. But it’s a three-groove race track, and any half-mile that is a three-groove race track is a heck of a race track.

Posted by Brian T. Smith
NASCAR

Transcription of an interview conducted on Thursday morning with Jimmy Makar, senior vice president of Joe Gibbs Racing.

BTS: How have things been going for you thus far this season?

JM: Well, we’re really, really hitting the high points, and there’s been some low points. But, in general, I think we’ve had a good start to the season. Certainly competitive, as we would’ve hoped to have been. Coming into the season, all three cars seemed to have been able to be competitive week-in and week-out. Now, we’ve had some issues with the [No.] 20 car (Tony Stewart), and we’ve obviously had some tire issues and some things that’ve kept them from having the finishes that they’re looking for. Certainly the [No.] 11 car (Denny Hamlin) is the one that’s had more of that than anybody—just some failures and some problems that’s kept them from finishing races, even though they’ve run really, really well. It’s kind of been … it’s got some good points and some bad points to it. But I think what we’re looking for is our competitiveness while we’re on the race track, and that’s been good. So we’re pretty happy.

BTS: Now that you’ve been dealing with the Car of Tomorrow for a while, what is your opinion of it?

JM: Obviously time’s going to make it easier to work with and more familiar for everyone; from the aspect of working on the car to driving the car. And the drivers are certainly going to get used to them the more seat time they have with it, and as they figure out what they can and can’t do with that car. So, yeah, I think they’re getting used to it. Whether they like it or not is a whole ‘nother story. [Laughs.] I’m not sure everybody is enamored with it, but they’re learning to deal with it, ‘cause they know that’s what they’ve got to race with. And so they’ve got to learn what it takes and how to drive that car. And it’s the same thing, I think, for us. We’re not necessarily enamored with the car—it’s bit of a difficult piece to work on; it’s got some inherent issues we’ve got to work through— but it’s the car we’re given to race with, and we just have to make the best of it, more so than our competition does. We’re learning a lot about it. We’re spending a lot of time doing tests with it; figuring out what makes it tick and what best we can do to make the car better than our competition.

BTS: What are still some of the biggest struggles that you’re dealing with for the car and making certain things work? What are you guys still trying to improve and get over the hump with?

JM: Um, probably the biggest thing is the way the car drives. The ability to make the car turn well and be balanced, well-balanced for the drivers. The aero-balance is quite a bit different than what we’ve had in the past, so that affects it in some of these high-speed places that we’re going to. And the geometry of the front-end is certainly a little bit different. We’re trying to figure out what we can do with our front-ends to make the car respond and stick to the race track and turn for the drivers the way they want them to. That’s probably been the classic problem.

BTS: Coming into Bristol, how do you guys view this track? Is it fun to get out on an old-school track like this?

JM: Yeah. Bristol’s always fun to go to. It’s one of those tracks where it’s always a good-old race; there’s not a lot of high-tech things you have to do for Bristol. You’ve got to get your car driving really, really well, and work on supspension and springs, shocks, bars—the classic things you work on for a race car. The aero part is not a huge issue—it’s got a small affect on the cars, so you don’t have to really worry about it. The aero push behind the cars and the traffic … you can’t run as good out front because, adversely, you’re always in traffic, whether you’re out front or behind. You know, a lot of those things go away, and you just get down to good, old-fashioned racing. And the short-track style makes it fun from a mechanical standpoint; working on the race cars and working on those things. And I know from a driver’s standpoint it’s a lot of fun, because they’re just back to using their talent to race better than their competition.

BTS: It’s still early in the season, but do you like where the overall team is at right now? You guys are at least close enough everywhere or near the top, so you’re obviously in a good position to make a really strong run as things even out.

JM: Yeah, like you said, it’s early. But you want to start off at a position that keeps you up with the front of the pack. And we certainly feel like we are with at least two of the cars. And the [No.] 11 car I’m sure will get back on track here soon, and some of these bad breaks will stop happening to them. They’re certainly competitive enough to climb their way towards the front. The big thing is how competitive we are, week-in and week-out. We’ve got cars that can run in the top five, six, seven, and the rest will take care of itself, and that’s where we feel like we’re at right now.

Posted by Brian T. Smith
NASCAR

NASCAR announced a deal with Nationwide Insurance to sponsor its No.2, formerly known as Busch, series beginning in 2008. 

Chairman Brian France didn’t talk specifics, and said the deal came after “a very thorough process of trying to find the right partner, adding up what we think is important for the series and all the things that you would expect us to be thinking about.”
Exactly what would we expect NASCAR to be thinking about? Ponder things like sinking TV ratings and attendance, rising ticket prices, maybe an increasing sense of disconnect between the fans and their heroes behind the wheel, and it’s pretty easy to venture a guess as to what France and Co. were and are thinking about. Money, money and money.
Word is the sponsorship deal is worth $10-12 million a year, which reportedly is similar to what Anehuser-Busch had been paying. Not bad for a racing league that was once just a step or two from the short-track stock racers you can find at Volunteer Speedway, Wythe or Lonesome Pine Raceway. Not that anyone is pretending that the awkwardly-named Nationwide Series is any kind of minor-league system anymore. Anyone except the NASCAR big wigs, that is.
Nationwide’s representative at Wednesday’s announcement said the fact that Nextel Cup drivers who moonlight in Busch Cars - maybe NASCAR should have a contest to come up with a catchy new nickname to replace “Buschwhackers” - wasn’t a big deal to the sponsor. That’s no news flash, either. The suits aren’t likely to change much in the series, since more racing fans are likely to turn on their televisions to watch Carl Edwards, Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch drive on Saturday afternoons than Jason Keller, Danny O’Quinn and Scott Wimmer. Then again, wouldn’t 100,000 people be just as likely to pack Bristol Motor Speedway to watch less experienced drivers spin and wreck for 300 laps? Note the fact that while the drivers raved about BMS’ new surface after an alarmingly clean Sharpie 500, more than a few fans called the race “boring.”
If the death knell for the old Southern Tradition that was NASCAR hadn’t already sounded, the demise of the Busch sponsorhip ought to take care of it. Granted, the loss of alcohol and tobacco sponsors for the main series isn’t going to hurt anyone’s feelings, and we do still have the Hooters Pro Cup - unless they get a new sponsor and change that to the Bath & Body Works Pro Series.
As far as the Winston/Nextel Cup goes, that’s getting a new handle, too. From now on, call it the Sprint Cup, just don’t use an AT&T cell phone to do it. By the way, doesn’t “Sprint Cup” sound like something local drivers should be competing on dirt tracks for?

Posted by From the Archives
NASCAR