Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

I'd like to hear from someone "in the know", not a keyboard expert...

Are the Goodyear tires coming apart because of a manufacturing or design flaw, or are they actually wearing out prematurely due to poor tire management or on track abuse?

Not sure about last night's failure for Swindell because I didn't see the tire. But, the track did take rubber and that could likely have played a part. Tires blow for various reasons: wearing out due to rubber down conditions, manufacturer's flaw, run over debris on the track and damage tire, overheating due to chassis setup - these are the common ones anyway.

I would like to see a picture of Sammy's tire after it blew to make a determination. I remember the Nationals last year. That LR tire had a lot of tread left on it. My guess would be that one was purely manufacturer flaw; however, it could be something in the way Sammy and crew set his cars up. Not going to try and guess how he likes his cars setup, but it could be a bad combination with the GY tires.

Or....maybe it's just purely bad luck.

At the nationals last year,you could see Sammys tire was low on air before it blew apart.It had lost air for some reason,puncture,bad bleeder or something.

If you watch the clip of the final lap in the dirtracingreport thread, it appears that the RR was low coming to the white flag.

Swindell and Myers goodyears last night were caused by delaminating.

I don't aim to please.
I aim to hit the target.

If this report is true, it changes the debate dramatically.

Goodyear has a problem that they have failed to address!

We witnessed it during the 50th edition of the Nationals, again in Belleville, and last night at Eldora. I'm sure there were others...

I've built tires for Michelin for 19 years, and the only thing I can tell by your 'delaminating' term, is the tread separating from the carcass?

In tires- HEAT buildup is the biggest enemy in tire failures. Lack of air pressure, tremendous friction, and weight (downforce) will contribute.

I am certain Sammy knows how to put the pounds to the ground, and hosspower is of no shortage in his camp. It is no secret 'CONSERVING TIRES' till late in the race, has had more success than leading from the start (or driving like it), and it is not the tire industry's fault that 'passing' is too hard to justify making a longer lasting tire for the moment. Tire technology has always fought to try to keep up with racing in general- and usually when tires survive a decent number of laps, with tread left , they are deemed too heavy. Just a bunch of ramblings here, but this 'fickleness' on racing tires, is I think a huge reason Michelin doesn't even try to unlock the mysteries of racing tires on steep banked tracks. I KNOW they have the people, but when tires blow, and fans complain, well.... we'd rather see you guys bash our competitors instead of us.

I assume the winner came across the line on GY's too? As well as the rest of the field?

Truth- Modern day sprint car racing DEMANDS tires that will only last a feature, nothing more. With that, the additional 'safety factors' for a tire goes out the window. Push it too far, and it blows, simple as that. The laws of nature never changed.

The crazy part to me is- The cost of the tire bill has went up since they don't last as long, and NOBODY is doing anything to slow it down. It's another reason open wheel racing is pricing itself out of contention in regards to an entertainment destination. The only winners for the short term, are the tire dealers. In the long term, everybody loses.

I remember a feature at Eldora that had a bunch of 'green/ white' restarts that cost Lasoski a win? Each restart was due to someone blowing a tire, and I know GY wasn't on contract that night.

I'ts always easier to blame the tire. I'm sure a bleeder didn't stick or there wasn't a piece of junk in the race track or nobody wheel banged someone else or hit the wall. What I'm trying to say are there are too many things that can happen while racing to damage a tire. I was with the Goodyear race tire dealer at Knoxville for 21 years, and in all that time I think I saw 2 maybe 3 tires fail due to delamination. I've seen a lot of tire failures and the biggest majority or them are from low air pressure or running into something. Some just pop, some of them really blow up big time. Johnny Herrera (sp.?) back in '88 blew a left rear going down the backstretch at K-Ville and took out nearly all the bottom of his top wing. Tire failures are going to happen, just be careful where you place the blame.

Denny White

GOODYEAR #1 in RACING

Goodyear tires de something often

That's funny because the only guys I seen having tire issues were Sammy and Lucas. Maybe Meyers had one go down but if he did I missed it.

...

Came apart at the line.

I don't aim to please.
I aim to hit the target.

I wasn't referring to Goodyears in my second post, just in case it sounded that way.

I remember a lot of tires blowing in the 80's , usually 1 or 2 a night on 410 cars. Hoosiers, McCreary's etc., they all blew at one time or another. Back then the issue was treated as a game of chance, today it is blamed on the tire maker. I guarantee you that if Goodyear tire failures were a thing of the past, the next complaint would be that they are too heavy. Sounds to me the trick is to be able to get 35 laps out of a 30 lap tire. Used to be a driver could give a tire break now and then , but nowadays it seems the order is to lay on it the entire time, or you lose.

I don't really have a dog in this hunt................seems the rules have all changed as to what a racing tire should be.

I also remember in the 90's Swindell mentioning Kinser needed to watch blistering his tires when he got to Nas--r. This came after Kinser blistered his right rear at Devils Bowl on the last day he ran for Karl(finishing 2nd or 3rd). Blistering comes before separation, due to heat buildup that is beyond what the tire can stand. I know they weren't running Goodyears that day either.

I have to admit though, when my favorite drivers lose due to tire failure, I want to blame the tire maker too. LOL.

I've heard of them, and seen a few come through when I was fixing flats at a gas station. I never saw one of those separate. But I do know of a bunch of brand new Uniroyals that separated in the 70's-80's! Just as soon as I went to work for that plant, it was as if everybody was blaming me for it! It's all in compounds, shelf life, etc, etc. Today, EVERY tire maker pays attention to shelf life, even Goodyear. They have to.

By the time I went to work for Uniroyal, they were bought out by Michelin. STILL, it was 10 years before I was building tires I can still be kinda proud of today. Michelin clamped down on us, as did every other tire manufacturer, when Firestone had their failures around year 2000. --(some claimed their failures were also due to overaged stock).Tire failures are much less acceptable today than they were 12 years ago. In fact , we recently had a lawsuit over a tire failure that came from a spare tire, left in the elements, since 1997, and that line of tire was heavily monitored in it's building-finish process due to Isuzu being overly picky, or so we thought. The liabilities are the shits, when you think about the millions of tires we have out there today.

I didn't choose tires as a vocation of love, I chose them since they gave me money for burritos and diet cokes as I burned up the rest of the money looking for car parts and ladies in need of love!LOL...the rest I just wasted.

Didn't mean to make it look like you were bad mouthing Goodyears. Your post just was the last one in the thread, and I replied to that one. Actually, it's kind of nice to have someone who's got some kind of an idea about tires posting here. Most of the people criticising tires on here have no clue. Sammy's tire last year at the Nationals was going down, either by a stuck bleeder or a hole. If you watch the video carefully before the blowout, you see it shaking sideways and that means it either is low on air, or the tread run-out is way off. That hasn't happened since they were built in Chile. One of the dumbest decisions Goodyear ever made. Blistering is another subject that has so many variables that is best left for a later dicussion.

Denny White

GOODYEAR #1 in RACING

S. Kinser once said he has his tire pressure just high enough to keep them from falling off of rim

Someone told me that they saw on twitter that Sammy's LR and what was left of the RR were confiscated by GoodYear for evaluation and testing. Anybody else heard this?

Part time racefan, part time race photographer.