Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, Race No. 27 – Tales of the Turtles 400
NASCAR Xfinity Series, Race No. 26 – Chicagoland 300
New Tire Set-up to Add Grip, Increases Give-up: NASCAR is on a stretch of the schedule where tire wear and give-up is at a premium. Coming off high wear tracks at Darlington and Richmond, the circuit visits Chicagoland, which is another track where lap times are expected to fall off more than two seconds over the course of a full fuel run.
Goodyear is bringing a new tire combination to Chicagoland, with a tried-and-true left-side run earlier this year at Fontana and a new multi-zone tread right-side that has more tractive compounds on both zones compared to last year at this track. Increased grip and more give-up are a winning combination for competitive racing as the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series begins its playoffs this week.
“We tested at Chicagoland with the goal of giving the teams more grip and we’ve come back with a tire set-up that does just that,” said Greg Stucker, Goodyear’s director of racing. “We’ve taken steps on both sides of the car. We are bringing the Fontana left-side, which not only adds compound grip, but has proven to be quite robust in meeting the duty cycle generated by the low air pressures the teams employ to gain grip from the left side. On the right-side, we are bringing a tire with a new multi-zone tread focused on grip improvement from both the inboard and outboard compounds. The net result is a set-up that will provide a good grip improvement while introducing more wear and fall-off, which adds to the competitiveness of the racing.”
Notes: While teams in all three NASCAR series in action at Chicagoland this week will run the same right-side tire code, teams in the Cup and Xfinity Series will run a different left-side code than those in the Truck Series.
For Cup and Xfinity, this left-side tire code (D-4650), which these teams ran at Fontana earlier this season, features a compound change to give the cars more grip while the right-side tire code (D-4746) is like last year’s in that it is a multi-zone tread tire, though this version features an updated construction (to align with other speedways) and new compounds in both the two-inch inboard Endurance Zone and the 10-inch outboard Traction Zone (to enhance grip and introduce more wear).
This tire set-up came out of a Goodyear tire test at Chicagoland on June 6-7with drivers Chase Elliott, David Ragan and Daniel Suarez participating. The set-up was also confirmed at a NASCAR organizational test at the speedway on August 15.
On all NASCAR ovals greater than one mile in length, teams are required to run inner liners in all four tire positions. For Chicagoland the air pressure in those inner liners should be 12-25 psi greater than that of the outer tire.
