Goodyear 'smarter' about Atlanta tires now

Goodyear will conduct a tire test Monday and Tuesday at Atlanta Motor Speedway, the track where it received harsh criticism for the tire it chose for the NASCAR Sprint Cup race in March.


Joe Gibbs Racing's Kyle Busch (the Atlanta race winner), Haas CNC Racing's Scott Riggs and Yates Racing's Travis Kvapil will participate in the test.

At Atlanta, drivers complained heavily that the tires did not have enough grip. Goodyear officials had brought hard tires because they were concerned about excessive tire wear on the fast 1.5-mile oval.

"We're going back there knowing what feedback we got in the spring," Goodyear director of race tire sales Greg Stucker said Tuesday. "Obviously people were concerned about the overall level of grip that we had and if we were too conservative.

"We're going back a lot smarter on the car versus where we were at Atlanta in March. We have had several more races in that kind of configuration since then."

Stucker said most of the left side tires Goodyear will test are being used at other tracks, while many of the right sides it plans to test are new compounds.

"We just have a better idea what to expect throughout the course of the race and what the challenges were [at Atlanta]," Stucker said. "We can just work a little bit more on spreading the work out between the right sides and left sides, maybe versus what we had back then. We'll look at all those pieces and try to make sure we have a good, decent combination.

"The biggest thing is we just have some race data. We kind of know how the car behaves, we know what to expect from the tire. It's just a little bit more of a known animal than it was in December when we made the recommendation."

Goodyear engineers will take into consideration that the test will be conducted in hotter conditions than when the drivers race there in late October.

"You just have to take all that into account when we go back, but unfortunately there's not a whole lot you can do about that," Stucker said. "We've got to get it done when we can and then come back in time to make the recommendation and get production complete in time for the race."

Stucker said Busch was invited because he won the race in March. Riggs was a late replacement for Richard Childress Racing's Kevin Harvick, who was originally scheduled to attend the test. The three drivers (Busch, Riggs, Kvapil) represent three different manufacturers.