Its tough for Tony Stewart to reach new heights of bombast, but his thoughts about the first stop of the Cup Series at Atlanta, and the tires they used there may have set a new standard even for our beloved Smoke!
I could insert a nasty quote from TStew here but I have Goodyear tires on my personal car.
Many of you here know what I have said about Tony's skitzoid behavior at times, but this time with such resounding agreement from others, it seems that he is totally right. Well, far be it for me to run against the streem of blame, but sometimes I just cannot help myself, so I will look Tony in the eye (so-to-speak) and utter these words...
Dood, you are only half right... Maybe.
The tire issue is really the result of the overall construction of NASCAR's Car Of TODAY. The COT presents a wierd balance of factors yet to be figured out on every track that the Cup Series runs on, especialy the extreemly fast Atlanta circuit. For instance...
Suspension.
NASCAR mandates that the new front end of these cars that feature a spliter that they do not wish to be scrapped on the track surface. No problem. Well, on second thought... yeah, there is a problem because you want the car to get as much downforce as possible in the turns. How to you go low without going too low? Enter the Bump Stop, a suspension device that fits in between the spring spacing that alows you to go soft on front springs, but will only allow the suspension to travel just above the splitter-scraping level.
Simple right?
Now I know what you are saying. "Mark, why don't they just go to a stiffer front spring? Glad you asked, friend! Well, that would make the ride height too high on the straights, and decrease aerodynamic effeciency (or balance), thus slowing the car down in a straight line. The result is this compromise on suspension, that makes this car more than a handful on different courses. The Atlanta cunundrum is this - the place is very fast, and NASCAR has been trying to slow down the place for years now. One of the ways you address it is by mandating a harder tire compound. When you insist on that, with a new car and a suspension settup that teams are still trying to figure out, something bad is bound to happen because the suspension cannot get the maximum grip from a tire as hard as a Superball.
Goodyear is not the problem.
A softer compound at Atlanta would have seen blowouts on the right front, or right rear (I guarentee it). So what do you want the complaint to be after a race - that you had a tire with less grip, or that you had a tire that would not hold up? Now you must be saying, "Mark, they SHOULD have had a tire test at Atlanta. Then they would have known what tire to bring."
They did!
They tested with a softer tire at Atlanta and were not happy with the results. My guess is that they did blow some tires, and decided that you can go really fast and put people in the wall with blown rubber, or you could go with a harder compound, and get what they got.
Stewart's tirade would have made more sense if they were racing last year's car, because the Nationwide Series did not have that problem (Note to Stewart - please notice that.) Such is the problem that exists now in NASCAR. A racecar is a single unit with many parts interdependant on eachother to perform well. If you change anything you change the performance of the whole unit. If Stewart thinks that Firestone, or Hoosier could come in and perform better with this new car, he is really mistaken, but I gotta hand it to Tony, because his latest tantrum will light a fire under NASCAR to get the problem fixed, and if that gets rid of the Bump Stops, or changes the spring rates to make the racing better, then he has accomplished his mission.
I do believe though that Smoke will keep the Goodyears on his personal car. Afterall, I do believe he gets them free!