The NASCAR community has asked a lot of Goodyear over the past two years, specifically in improving the short track and road course racing product with the now fourth year NextGen car.
In an environment where NASCAR is reluctant to increase horsepower from the current 670 range and has exhausted most of its aerodynamic options, Goodyear has been tasked with making a tire that falls off and degrades to a point where that is what improves the racing.
But as NASCAR Hall of Famer Dale Earnhardt Jr. points out in the latest episode of his podcast, fans should be grateful that the manufacturer is being asked to go well beyond their duties in making this car better.
“It’s not in Goodyear’s best interest to make a tire that’s failing,” Earnhardt said. “I’ve read about tire manufacturers that aren’t in F1, some of these big players in the tire manufacturing world were asked why they don’t want to be in some of the bigger series in motorsports. They said they want us to make a tire that degrades over the course of the race, and that’s not good for our business.
“If you’re a world tire manufacturer and you’re trying to sell fucking street tires to millions and billions of people… I don’t love [the excuse], but I think we need to say thank you Goodyear, we appreciate you for being understanding that the fans can tell the difference between if I see your tire struggling on Sunday, that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna go buy it for my truck on Monday. That’s what tire manufacturers are afraid of. If they have a bad day at the racetrack and drivers get out and go, ‘Fuck this tire, what a terrible tire,’ then nobody’s going to go buy their shit at the store.
“That’s why they’re here; they’re here to sell fucking tires to the consumers, not to make racing awesome. That’d be a good byproduct of their involvement is to make racing better, but at the top of the list is selling tires to consumers.”
To his point, the race at Richmond on Saturday night featured a tire that lost life quickly and produced a lot of action and passing.
Again … not that this is largely their responsibility.
“Congratulations but thank you, Goodyear, for going the extra mile, being aggressive and doing something that you didn’t really have to do,” Earnhardt said. “Goodyear could have said we’re making the tire we want to make, figure it out and they could have left that hard ass tire where we would have had a shit race.
“I was not expecting the race to be as good as it was, I’ll eat a little bit of crow. … Sumbitch wore out; you had guys that could run over each other in the corner if they got mad at each other — that’s all I want.”
