Successful or not, rain tires aren't option for Cup -- yet

Minutes before Friday's 11:45 a.m. ET Sprint Cup practice for the Centurion Boats at The Glen was scheduled to open, a downpour that had threatened the area around Watkins Glen International all morning struck.

It cast the entire day's schedule into question, as rain tires have not been an option for Sprint Cup Series teams on road courses since 2006. And until the Cup Series' schedule was settled, several Nationwide Series crew chiefs said their practice status couldn't be determined.

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I think we'll always consider anything. Knowing now that we ran a race in the rain, I think we'll sit down as a group and discuss the potential of doing that and the nightmare of doing that and see if it's worth it or not.
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ROBIN PEMBERTONSprint Cup Series practice and qualifying were ultimately canceled at about 2:30 p.m. with qualifying rained out for the fourth time in the last five years. NASCAR vice president of competition Robin Pemberton said that, despite those statistics, too many factors weigh against using rain tires for Cup events.

"When you run a companion race, like here at Watkins Glen, Cup has precedence over Nationwide," Pemberton said. "So if we rain out Saturday and Sunday and we race on Monday, Cup gets it first; and Nationwide could be here one or two extra days they don't need to be.

"There are a lot of things that go into it, but the current thinking is that Cup should be on the next clear day, and that it would take precedence."

Even though Goodyear's specially grooved wet weather tires -- which were used for the first time in a national touring series event last weekend in the Nationwide Series race at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal -- could be used if necessary for that series' events leading up to Saturday's Zippo 200, they were not on Friday. Rain continued until about 1:30 p.m., and the scheduled 1:45 start time for the first Nationwide practice passed. At least one car, owner James Finch's No. 1 Chevrolet, sat in its garage spot on rain tires.

Goodyear has 600 rain tires, or 150 sets, on site at Watkins Glen for the Nationwide cars. Goodyear's marketing manager for the Sprint Cup Series Rick Heinrich said that, due to the tires' construction, in ordinary wet conditions a single set could be used for an entire 200-mile race.

"It's a little heavier tire and a little stiffer construction," Heinrich said of the rain tires. "Typically a slick tire would have 3/32nds of an inch of tread rubber, and no grooves, and the rain tires have 6/32nds of tread rubber with grooves."

While slick tires create grip by generating heat, Heinrich pointed out that rain tires' groove patterns, which are designed to disperse water to the outside of the tire, enabled the tires to be used on any corner of the car, but that they had to be mounted facing in the correct direction.