The NASCAR Cup Series teams will have a new factor to consider this weekend at Martinsville Speedway. They will have a new tire from Goodyear, which makes its season debut.
According to a release from Goodyear, this new tire is on the left side of the Cup Series cars. It is one that Christopher Bell, Joey Logano, and Ross Chastain tested at New Hampshire Motor Speedway earlier this season.
Goodyear says that it delivers increased grip early in the run and more lap time fall-off as the drivers continue making laps around the Virginia short track. Although how much remains the question as drivers face temperatures in the high 50s during this playoff race.
The teams will pair this new left-side tire with a familiar right-side tire, one that they have used five times this season. They specifically used this right-side tire during the spring race at Martinsville Speedway as Denny Hamlin won.
“It’s going to be a different race,” Adam Stevens, Bell’s crew chief, said about the new tire’s debut. “The track surface is so much different, and then the ambient conditions are going to be so much different that how it takes rubber and lays rubber and behaves is going to be a completely different animal.”
A tire change at Martinsville is nothing new for Stevens and the rest of the Cup Series crew chiefs. NASCAR and Goodyear have made these changes in the past.
Stevens has seen some improved racing with these changes. He has also seen some teams fall victim to unexpected circumstances at the Virginia short track.
“We’ve seen in the past there, I want to say one of the Penske cars started on the pole — this was not this era car, but the previous car — and we had some kind of tire change,” Stevens said. “And they got lapped on the first run. I think everybody was surprised at the degradation and the wear, and the track didn’t take rubber.
“Once the race started, you didn’t have a lot of tools to work on it, and certainly didn’t have any tools until the caution came out, and it really put you in hang-on mode. And that is a distinct possibility at Martinsville, especially with the temps that we’re going to have, and a little bit of unknown with the new tire.
“So you hope that you unload close, and you hope you have an opportunity to go out there and put 60 or 70 laps on your tires in practice and really develop some kind of understanding of what you’re really up against.”
Introducing a new tire will create some potential headaches for crew chiefs still trying to lock their teams into the Championship 4. James Small is not a member of this group after Chase Briscoe locked up a spot with last weekend’s win at Talladega Superspeedway.
Small and the No. 19 team just get to wait and see how the new tire reacts during Saturday’s practice session. After that, they can just make adjustments as needed ahead of the Round of 8 race.
“We’ll see what the track temps are like and how it behaves when it rubbers in,” Small told media members ahead of Martinsville weekend. “But obviously, same construction as what we’ve been using, but just slightly softer compound.
“I know the guys that did the Loudon Goodyear tire test, including Christopher, they got a run on these tires. So we have some general feedback on how it compared to what we previously raced. So yeah, not expecting a huge amount of difference, just maybe a little more wear and fall off.”