Jul
At this week’s Goodyear tyre test at Martinsville (Virginia) Speedway, two of the racers who took part reported largely different results.
Unexpectedly, the Next Gen car’s ’s track races in Martinsville and Richmond, Virginia, earlier this season, delivered boring racing.
Due to the absence of warnings (five overall, with two stage breaks) and numerous pit stops under green flags, the Richmond race became a tyre strategy contest.
Just four cautions (two for stage breaks), five lead modifications, and a series of green-flag pit stops—all of which are unusual for the 12-mile track—were issued during the Martinsville race.
After that race, NASCAR declared it would carry out organisational and tyre tests prior to the series’ fall comeback. The organisational evaluation is set for August 23–24.
A ‘net positive’ found
The three racers, Austin Cindric, Kyle Busch, and Tyler Reddick, experimented with a variety of tyre formulations during this week’s tyre test.
In keeping with how the car is used for the series’ yearly dirt race, they also added a plastic underbody to the cars and took out the rear diffuser extensions.
The racers appear to be most aware of the latter modification.
“So, the Bristol dirt aero kit, let’s call it, the bottom pan area. I felt like that was a net positive,” Busch said. “We were able to get into a traffic setting situation where we started a race and kind of run around each other a little bit.
“The No. 2 car (Cindric) was a little better than us at that point. So he was able to get by me but when I could follow him I follow like he was on my bumper following me. I got on his bumper following him.
“He drove away just due to the fact that he was a little bit better than us at that point in the test, but I felt like that was a net positive.”
Reddick agreed.
“The underbody stuff that was tried certainly helped the situation. We are just missing the racing product a little bit, I think,” he said.
“Still, at the end of the day, the cars have a lot of grip at the short tracks and I don’t think we have enough power to rip the tires off if we make that mistake.”
Different tire compounds
Busch thought that none of the tyre compounds really made a significant difference, especially given the significant temperature differential between this week’s test (90s) and the race conditions at Martinsville in April (40s).
“There was no wear. And so with the control tire that we had, we would have some fall-off, but you could kind of recover your fall-off if you just took it easy for a couple laps and let it cool back down. Then re-attacked and we went.
“So, they’re falling off more due to heat than they’re falling off due to wear so I think we missed on the tire selection that that we had there. We didn’t gain anything on the tire.”
Reddick claimed that a change in horsepower might be able to fix the tyre problem.
“A lot of time, research and development have gone into the horsepower package that we are at now and you can’t just flip a switch or change the tapered spacer or go to a different horsepower level and have the same engine reliability across all the engine manufacturers,” he said.
“So, as much as it would be nice to have that option, I can’t really say whether that is an option or not because there is a lot that goes into that unfortunately.”
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