Air Pressure
With a stock car with stock parts in a series to where there’s no real separation between the top teams and the bottom, any sort of advantage to be gained can be the difference in winning or not. An area that has been explored is with tire pressures.
By playing with tire pressures, you’re not doing anything illegal. It’s allowed. However, it’s not advised either to go outside of the limits that Goodyear places on where to run your air pressures at.
While a lot of folks blamed Goodyear, Texas and even the Next Gen for the tire fiasco in Sunday’s AutoTrader EchoPark Automotive 500, it’s sounding more and more like this was an air pressure problem from the get go.
MORE: Officiating needs to get better in final playoff stretch
“It has been widely documented that the balance of the Next Gen car has shifted towards the rear,” said Greg Stucker, Goodyear’s director of racing entering the week of Texas. “On a weekly basis, optimizing tire performance is a key element in having a successful weekend. Air pressure, suspension geometry and shock settings work in unison to get the most out of the tire package. Being aggressive in any one of those areas is certainly a recipe for short-term speed, but the risk vs. reward of those choices can often come back and bite you.
“We work very closely with teams throughout the week and at the track, providing as much data as we can to help them make the right tire choices. We understand that teams are in a constant search for speed, but finding the edge of that envelope is key to finishing races.”
He called his shot and did so days before we witnessed 16 cautions for 91 laps in a sloppy NASCAR Cup Series race at Texas.
The initial indications came back to the tire woes being placed on teams running lower than normal air pressures.
“We’re gaining as much information as we can from the teams, trying to understand where they are with regard to their settings, air pressures, cambers, suspicions,” said Greg Stucker, Goodyear’s director of racing Sunday. “For sure I can say without a doubt air pressure is playing into it. We know where a lot of the guys are. Some were more aggressive than others. We know that plays a part.
“I’m not saying that’s the only thing, but it’s certainly a factor, so we’re just trying to understand everything else that is going on with regard to specific teams. We know a lot of guys have not had issues. We’ve had guys put full fuel runs on tires, but, obviously, other guys have had issues. We’ll be working with them to try to sort through that is.”
NASCAR agreed.
“Well, I mean, obviously we saw a lot of tire problems, and we saw a lot of teams that didn’t have tire problems,” Scott Miller said on Sunday night from Texas.
“We’re working through that. Goodyear is working through that with the teams, working through what the setups were, what the air pressures were, to try to get to the bottom of it.
“There was a lot of teams that reported no problems to us post-race, and they did admit to being a little bit on the conservative side air pressure and being closer to the suggested minimums that Goodyear recommended.
“I don’t really know how to comment on how long a tire should last.
“The top four at least ran 64 laps home. If they can go 64 laps, they have plenty of tires to get the job done.
“We’re all learning about the setups, the tires. Goodyear is learning about the construction, the new wheel. It’s part of a learning — it’s an unfortunate part of a learning process.”
Tyler Reddick’s crew chief, Randall Burnett, agreed that they went conservative with their tire setups and it paid off.
“We came into this race a little conservative,” he said. “We got bit at Kansas the other week with one. I think we’ve had four tires go down this year while leading the race.
“R.C. talked to me about it and said, Make sure you keep some air in the tires today. I tried to do that. A little bit more conservative approach this week. It’s a fine line. Everybody knows the speed, pushing the limits of the tires.
“With the low sidewalls, they’re not as forgiving as the 15-inch wheel stuff we had before. It’s a lot finer line, I think.
“I mean, there’s so many things that go into it, right? It’s tire pressure, it’s camber in the tires, it’s where you’re running on the racetrack. More often than not you see a guy that’s leading blow a tire, it’s because he has the cleanest air, the most air, most downforce on his car because he’s out front. Sometimes it overloads the tire.
“That’s kind of where we’re at with them.”
Even Chase Elliott who had a tire end his day on lap 183 agreed.
“I’m not sure that Goodyear is at fault,” he said. “Goodyear always takes the black eye, but they’re put in a really tough position by NASCAR to build a tire that can survive these types of racetracks with this car. I wouldn’t blame Goodyear.”
So maybe there is some merit to this after all. However, it’s got to get addressed and fixed because we’re 30 races into the season and it’s not gotten any better.
Officiating
Sometimes the umpire makes a bad call. Other times the official blows the whistle prematurely or misses a blatant foul or penalty. It happens. Officials are humans too. The thing is you don’t typically go through a playoff run with officiating being the common story. It is however in NASCAR.
That needs to change.
Between the tough decision at Daytona for the Coke Zero Sugar 400 to where it literally rained on the pack in Turn 1. Then to Denny Hamlin being purposely spun under caution by William Byron last Sunday at Texas and Ty Gibbs nearly running Ty Dillon into pit crews servicing pit stops and NASCAR seeing none of the above, it means something needs to happen better.
It needs to happen soon.
“I have to be honest with you. When we were in the tower, we were paying more attention to the actual cause of the caution up there and dispatching our equipment,” said Scott Miller, Senior Vice President of Competition on Sunday night when addressing the Byron and Hamlin situation.
“The William Byron-Denny Hamlin thing we had no eyes on. We saw Denny go through the grass. By the time we got to a replay that showed the incident well enough to do anything to it, we had gone back to green.
“I’m not sure that issue is completely resolved as of yet. We’ll be looking at that when we get back to work.”
Elton Sawyer said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio on Monday that it wasn’t like they purposely turned the blind eye at Byron spinning Hamlin. He said it’s a long process that has to be quick once the caution is displayed.
The first have to bring the safety vehicles to the track and get to the scene of the accident and do so without interference from the race cars on track too. Once the safety team is there, they have to be sure the driver is okay. They also have to be sure they get the cars properly lined up on track and update timing and scoring. They then have to get prepared for upcoming pit stops.
Between all of this, it’s a lot and easy to miss an on-track incident under caution.
As far as what they can do better next time to ensure they don’t miss that incident in the future?
“Well, so we don’t have the cameras and — the cameras and the monitors that we’ve got, we dedicate them mostly to officiating, seeing our safety vehicles, how to dispatch them, all that,” he says. “By the time we put all those cameras up, we don’t have room for all of the in-car cameras to be monitored.
“If we would have had immediate access to the 24 in-car camera, that would have helped us a lot with being able to find that quickly. That’s definitely one of the things that we’re looking at.”
That’s all nice and all, but this has to come to a stop and you can’t have officiating stealing the show.
“So if we had seen that good enough to react to it real-time, which we should have, like no excuse there, there would probably have been two courses of action: one would have been to put Hamlin back where he was, and the other would be to have made William start in the back,” Miller says.
That type of statement can’t happen in a playoff race. When you have tires blowing the way that they are and cars catching on fire spontaneously the way that they are, it’s too much. It’s time to turn the onus back on the on track product…
Penalties
This is another big thing to occur this past week with the penalties being handed down on Tuesday. We seem to be talking about this a lot this season with plenty to go around heading to Indianapolis back in July. Now, here we go again.
Last week it was the pit road penalty for Ryan Blaney for his tire falling off and bouncing down pit road in Bristol. They’d appeal the penalty to keep the crew together for Texas but this week announced that they have now dropped the appeal and will let the 4-race suspension begin this weekend in Talladega. I wrote about why they’d do that last Friday.
Now, NASCAR hinted that this could happen and on Tuesday afternoon, officials handed out two sizable penalties Tuesday for rough driving, docking William Byron and Ty Gibbs for their roles in separate incidents in last weekend’s Cup Series race at Texas Motor Speedway.
Byron was hit with a 25-point penalty in both the driver and team owner standings for bumping Denny Hamlin out of position during a late-race caution period in Sunday’s AutoTrader EchoPark Automotive 500 – a punishment that carries significant playoff implications. He was also fined $50,000.
Byron was third in the Cup Series Playoffs with a 17-point cushion above the elimination line before the penalty. He’ll now enter Sunday’s YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway ranked 10th out of the 12 remaining title-eligible drivers and eight points below the provisional elimination line. Two races are left in the Round of 12 – Sunday at Talladega and Oct. 9 at Charlotte Motor Speedway’s road course.
Gibbs, in his 10th Cup Series start for 23XI Racing in place of the injured Kurt Busch, was fined $75,000 for veering into the No. 42 Petty GMS Chevrolet of Ty Dillon on pit road. That aggressive contact came in close proximity to pit-crew personnel and NASCAR officials working in a nearby pit stall.
Gibbs, 19, was not issued a points penalty since he is an Xfinity Series regular who does not collect Cup Series points. But his No. 23 Toyota team was handed a 25-point deduction in the owner standings.
It’s the second time this year that Gibbs has been penalized for unsafe driving on pit road. He was fined $15,000 for making contact with Sam Mayer’s car in the pits after an Xfinity Series race at Martinsville in April. That retaliation led to post-race fisticuffs between the two drivers.
I don’t mind the fine for Gibbs in a sense that it was reckless and dangerous. What I do mind is Byron being docked after the race concluded.
NASCAR officials did not penalize Byron during Sunday’s 500-miler, saying their spotters did not see the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet send Hamlin’s No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota spinning under yellow-flag conditions in retaliation for earlier contact. Hamlin was not restored to his original running position, and he finished 10th. Byron came home seventh.
That was a huge penalty for Hamlin who should have never been penalized in the first place. NASCAR admitted that. They also admitted a penalty could later come for Byron too.
“I have to be honest with you. When we were in the tower, we were paying more attention to the actual cause of the caution up there and dispatching our equipment,” said Scott Miller, Senior Vice President of Competition on Sunday night when addressing the Byron and Hamlin situation.
“The William Byron-Denny Hamlin thing we had no eyes on. We saw Denny go through the grass. By the time we got to a replay that showed the incident well enough to do anything to it, we had gone back to green.
“So if we had seen that good enough to react to it real-time, which we should have, like no excuse there, there would probably have been two courses of action: one would have been to put Hamlin back where he was, and the other would be to have made William start in the back.
“I’m not sure that issue is completely resolved as of yet. We’ll be looking at that when we get back to work.”
I don’t like a penalty of this magnitude to occur after the race is over. I would have rather seen NASCAR do something similar to F1 or INDYCAR to the “incident being under review” during the race and can black flag Byron later on.
But doing so days later, I don’t think is right. He deserved a penalty and deserved what he got, but it should have taken place on Sunday.
Jimmie Johnson Return?
On Monday, Jimmie Johnson announced that he’ll scale back his racing in 2023. He won’t be full-time in the NTT INDYCAR Series anymore. However, that news also opens up a potential to run a few Cup races next season though too.
Johnson is friends with Justin Marks and they have room with Trackhouse with Project91. Would Johnson be willing to run the Daytona 500?
He is. He’s also looking at doing the double in May for the Indy 500-Coca-Cola 600 too. On top of that, he feels like he’s eligible as a past champion to race the Busch Clash and All-Star race as well.
Without any manufacturer ties, he can make this work.
Plus, don’t discredit a joint partnership with Trackhouse and Ganassi for the INDYCAR side either. Marks has made it known that the next step for Trackhouse is to grow into other motorsports. INDYCAR is on his radar.
Who did Marks buy out in NASCAR?
Ganassi.
He has a relationship with him and what better way to get your feet wet than to team up with Ganassi on the INDYCAR side to run Johnson.
It gives Johnson security to run in Cup with Trackhouse and INDYCAR with Ganassi with familiar faces at each.
Bowman Out For Sunday
In some late shocking news on Thursday, Hendrick Motorsports announced that Alex Bowman will not compete in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series playoff race at Talladega Superspeedway after experiencing concussion-like symptoms following an accident in the Sept. 25 event at Texas Motor Speedway.
Bowman, the title-contending driver of the No. 48 Ally Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 for Hendrick Motorsports, was evaluated by physicians today in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Noah Gragson will fill in for Bowman this weekend. The Las Vegas native has 13 Cup-level starts in 2022 with a best finish of fifth Aug. 28 at Daytona International Speedway. The 24-year-old driver won the April 23 NASCAR Xfinity Series event at Talladega.
Bowman is the 2nd driver to miss a race due to concussion-like symptoms this season following Kurt Busch as the other. Busch crashed in qualifying on July 23 and hasn’t been back since.
Bowman enters this weekend 26 points below the cutline and will be facing a must-win scenario at the Charlotte ROVAL should he be cleared.
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