You Asked For It! ~ "Have The Tires Gotten Tired?"
4/4/2014 I bid
you welcome gentle readers, and as always, a warm welcome to our assigned
reader of NASCAR writings, somewhere in the beautiful glass-enclosed Fan and
Media Espionage Center in the Queen's City of Charlotte, North Carolina. The
question this missive will strive to answer has been asked by many. What the
[heck] is going on with the Goodyears this year? Is it time to turn to
Bridgestone? Michelin? Hoosier?
Well,
Mama isn't a crew chief and doesn't play one on TV, though I suppose she could go stay at
a Holiday Inn if you think it might help. Boys and girls, race fans of all
ages, there is nothing whatsoever wrong with the Goodyear tires except that in
most cases they are last year's tires. No, that doesn't mean they are leftovers
or actually year-old tires, though being a year old would not consign them to
anyone's scrap heap. (How old is the spare in your trunk?) What it means is
that they are, at least for the past two races, which shall serve as an
excellent comparison, the same tire configuration as run at California and
Martinsville in 2013. Putting
aside the two giant Superspeedways, we couldn't be looking at two more diverse
tracks than the 2-mile Michigan clone in SoCal and the tiny .526-mile. part asphalt, part concrete paperclip at the foot of the Blue
Ridge Mountains, yet what did we see at both tracks on successive Sundays? Tire
wear, more tire wear, blown left front tires, blown left rear tires and more
tire wear; at both tracks, so different in every way, the tire wear and its end
result, car in the wall, seemed eerily similar. Let's
take a look at what we're dealing with and what changed between last year and
this year. Neither track has been repaved or resealed since raced
on last year, and praise the Lord, neither has been "levigated", so the fault is not the making of track or
track surface. Likewise, at least at the two tracks in question, the Goodyear
tires have not changed between the years. Gentle readers, that leaves only one
possible culprit, and that of course, is the cars themselves. In fairness,
everyone that had a need to know, did know that NASCAR was working feverishly
underneath those pretty Gen-6ers in an effort to stem what's become all too
familiarly known as "aero-push", the inability to pass a car once
having caught up to that car. Aero-push gives a distinct advantage to the car
lucky enough to be at the head of the pack, as his car is playing havoc with
the air that surrounds the cars behind him and they simply cannot pass without
becoming very unpopular in the camp of that lead driver when his car meets the
SAFER barrier. Here
again, not being a mechanic or crew chief, the technical terms somewhat elude
me, but you big, burly guys out there will understand the intent of what I'm
putting forth and maybe clarify terms for all of us. Over the winter, NASCAR
messed with some serious suspension issues, largely affecting the rear set and
travel of the cars in relation to the wheels and attitude of said wheels. In
short, they changed how the car basically steers, and then eliminated any
restriction on camber settings. Oops! They also increased spoiler height, which
adds to the downforce on that rear end considerably. All
those crew chiefs we've been feeling so sorry for because Big Bad NASCAR took
away all their "creativity" and ability to "experiment in the
grey areas" now have something they can play with to their hearts'
content... and boy, have some of those boys messed it up! First on the drawing
board is a lesson in "Camber 101." Camber is the set of the wheel,
side to side. This is completely different from toe-in - toe-out, referred to
as "alignment." You can visualize those settings by thinking "pigeon-toed"
or splay-footed. What
this does, depending on how it is set, is control what part of the tire is
hitting the pavement, especially in the turns. In our little diagram, we can
see that when traveling straight ahead, the camber produced tire line and true
vertical meet at the same point. Turn that car left and the left camber leans
WAY out while the right camber straightens. The result is excess pressure on
the left side tires, and a change in the point of where the rubber meets the
road from tire center to tire shoulder... never a good thing. With that in
mind, one can more easily understand the broken cord on the #48 at California
and other rubber anomalies we've witnessed this year. So, what
to do, what to do? On this one, I'm actually going to lean a bit on the boys in
the booth from FOX, as they've been mentioning this off and on all year. These
cars are running on bump stops, once outlawed by NASCAR, and for some indiscernible
reason reinstated several years back. What does a bump stop do? Essentially, it
negates most of what a shock absorber is supposed to do. The name itself is
oxymoronic, as it creates bumps rather than stops them. Recall the rough ride
over the bumps on the California backstretch. What the boys are saying, and I
couldn't agree more, is that the only suspension these cars have is the tires.
Rubber will bend and give, where cold steel refuses to do so. No tire was ever
intended to carry the entire load pressed upon it by a 3200-pound stock car,
much less carry it on the shoulder of said tire. Boom! Car, meet SAFER barrier! The
booth crew then go on to describe what they are seeing from the newest version
of Gen-6 as "sliding through the corners" and that is a term with
which any old-school graduate is more than familiar. There were two distinct
things that made racecars of another era slide through corners. One of them is
dirt, and they are still doing that today at many venues. NASCAR's own Camping
World Trucks visited Tony Stewart's sweet little bullring, Eldora, last year
and I promise you, a grand time was had by all. No, don't get ahead of me; I'm
not suggesting that we plow under today's modern paved wonders and return to
dirt... except maybe a couple, but that is for another day. There
was however, one other thing that made cars slide through corners, and it's
something that many of the young fans and readers may never have seen or even
heard of. They were known as bias-ply tires, and were the forerunners of today's
radial tires. They didn't have the longevity of the nylon or steel corded
radials, but they by the Lord were better to race on, and I wish I had Dale
Earnhardt back for just enough time to explain to you why that is so. My best
effort is to say that the bias plies did for you naturally what most are trying
to accomplish with camber and bump stops, while still allowing the use of
springs and shock absorbers to control the ride and steering ability of the
car. Oh, and
it's not going to end here. NASCAR has already promised more changes to come, just
in case anyone thought he had almost figured out how to handle today's
problems. Both cars and engines are scheduled to be lessened in size and
engines slowed somewhat dramatically. Again, that is a story for another day,
but taken altogether with the suspension changes, what I can see us eventually
winding up with is the car of yesterday, pure and simple. I'd estimate a car
probably circa early 80s vintage. Those are now referred to I believe as the
Gen-3 cars, when the big-blocks and huge cars were eliminated in favor of
smaller models with less cubic inch displacement... and suddenly, everything
old is new again... so why not go back to racing on bias plies? Instead of
prescribing the exact spring and shock package allowed at each and every track,
just let those good ol' boys on the hauler into that suspension system and see
what they can do. Eventually, they'll get tired of fixing cars that they
themselves put into the wall and get it right. One
other term that used to be as common as feathers on a goose but is almost never
heard in NASCAR today is "stagger." It apparently was set aside when
the radial tire became King of the Road. By way of my female insufficient
ability to explain, there wasn't enough give in the harder radials to make the
stagger as effective as it was when paired with the bias ply tires. This term
though, is easy to explain. Because stock cars primarily make left turns, the
tire sizes are "staggered" so that the right side tires are slightly
larger in circumference than the left sides, and Goodyear made them that way on
purpose. What
this did was allow the car to turn left by default, with the driver hardly
having to crank the steering wheel. For years there was a way of describing
stagger that all crew chiefs and TV personalities employed that made it so
simple even I could understand it. I wish I had my giggle-buddy Benny here to
show you, but for today, I'll have to do. Visualize a paper cup laid on its
side, with the bottom to your left and the open end to your right. Now, push it
with your fingers and you will immediately see the effect of tire stagger. Along with stagger, the crew would employ "wedge" to shift the
weight load if stagger provided more or less turn than desired on each track.
It was much simpler than all of the finagling going on under the rear end of
today's cars, and it was all legal and above board, with no crab-walking cars angling
around the track. The only time a penalty was incurred was if those left side
tires somehow wound up on the right side of the car. NASCAR didn't care much
for that idea. And so
gentle readers, crew chiefs, and you too NASCAR, the fault does not lie with
Goodyear and they have done nothing wrong. Further tire testing on these
revamped cars seems definitely to be in order, and yesterday might be a good
time to start. As noted here many times over, our drivers evince an uncanny
ability to find the spot where the SAFER barrier isn't. Must we continue to
slam cars into concrete until once more, the unthinkable becomes reality?
Watching the games played between crew chiefs and NASCAR has always been fun,
but let's not play it at the expense of drivers' lives.
Crew chiefs, you are especially culpable here in that you have the choice not
to run so much camber, or indeed any at all if you so choose. Wouldn't not
blowing tires and putting your car and driver into the wall be a good step
toward winning that race you want so badly? Races are not won when the car is
in the garage for repairs. OK, now
it is your turn gentle readers. Please, leave your comments and suggestions
below for discussion. Sometimes amazing things come from such fan conversation,
and here we do it without name-calling or insulting each other's intelligence. That's
the secret folks; that's why NASCAR pays attention to boards such as this one.
If you want to be heard, don't answer on Twitter. Those comments are soon
covered and lost. Ones left here will be here next year and hopefully next
decade, so this is where all constructive remarks belong, whether critical or
approving. This is mechanical stuff and you guys know all about that; it's
genetic, so share your knowledge with the rest of us. One
short note in parting... next Thursday, April 10, Racin' Nation Radio has a treat in store for the entire
listening audience. They... we... have secured a two-hour block of radio time
for some very special programming. Please mark this on your calendar: 8:00 -
10:00 on April 10, go to racinnation.net and listen live to a 2-hour
awe-inspiring old-timey rappin' session with Tiger Tom Pistone and Humpy Wheeler, two of the sweetest guys on
this earth today, each of whom I am so very proud to call "friend"
and know it is reciprocated. Write it down because I know you're not going to
want to miss it. Be well
gentle readers, and remember to keep smiling. It looks so good on you!
PattyKay Lilley
~
PattyKay