Goodyear exec: No talk of changing aerodynamics package at Chicagoland

Goodyear’s director of racing said there has been “zero discussion" with NASCAR about changing the aerodynamics package for the Chase for the Sprint Cup opener at Chicagoland Speedway even though a lower-downforce configuration was tested there last week.

Greg Stucker told a group of reporters Saturday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway that “we’d have to sit down and look at it pretty hard" if the sanctioning body wished to apply the package that led to a 132% increase in green flag passes and drew rave reviews from fans and drivers at Kentucky Speedway last week. NASCAR officials haven’t made any public proclamations of such a change, but speculation has been prevalent among competitors following the Chicago test.

“We haven’t had that serious conversation yet because that really hasn’t been proposed to us," he said. “So we’d have to kind of sit down and see what our options might be."

Among them, theoretically, would be using the same tires as at Kentucky, which like Chicagoland and half of the 10-race Chase is a 1.5-mile track. The lower-downforce package has also been tested at Darlington Raceway in preparation for its race on Sept. 6.

“I think if you look at how Kentucky went and the level of grip versus the level of downforce, you could extrapolate to say that Chicagoland would probably be similar," Stucker said. “I think we’d probably want to go back and confirm that and look at that briefly. Every time we’ve done that, if you use Kentucky as a reference point, you look at Darlington where we ran, you know, one of the cars with lower downforce configuration with the current package, 2015 package. It seemed to be OK. About three-quarters to a second. We think we'd probably be in the same ballpark for Chicago." Stucker said because of production deadlines, Goodyear would need such a decision from NASCAR “probably within the next week or so."