It’s no secret that short-track racing has been a massive issue for NASCAR with the Next-Gen car. However, the All-Star race at the North Wilkesboro Speedway on Sunday had plenty of reasons to be positive. Goodyear developed a tire compound for the event that ended up working really well for the duration of the race.
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NASCAR’s Senior VP John Probst was one of the happiest men at North Wilkesboro as a result. He revealed that there would be tire tests in the future at Martinsville and Iowa to develop compounds suited to short-track racing. The NASCAR executive also urged Goodyear to not take their foot off the gas and to keep being aggressive in their development of the same.
“Hats off to Goodyear for getting aggressive with this tire,” he said. “The good thing is we got some tire tests coming up here in the near future at Iowa and Martinsville and we’ll just get more aggressive, we’ll keep stepping up on it. It’s always hard when you come to a track…you practice in the daylight, you race at night. The track temperature has a lot to do with how the tires perform so we’re gonna stay at it.”
Goodyear’s crown jewel for the weekend was the soft compound tires but it had some problems. The tires lasted way longer than a lot of people hoped for and Joey Logano was to one to bring that to the spotlight.
NASCAR Senior VP praises All-Star race winner for uncovering crucial flaw
The Team Penske driver bagged the million dollars thanks to an extremely long run on the soft compound tires which should have degraded a lot more. Probst said that it was something that did not go their way but thanked Logano for the effort and for bringing this matter into the spotlight.
“Did everything go exactly like we thought? No. I think we would have all liked to see the tires fall off a little more. Credit to the #22 for doing something that honestly, you know Friday in practice and working with Goodyear, we didn’t think you could do. We didn’t think we’d see somebody run it that long and that hard and have it hold up that well,” he added.
This is only just a part of the solution if it works. The bigger problem is the low-horsepower engines that are currently used and it will be I interesting to see if NASCAR does something about them.
