Goodyear’s new tire “at least” 2 years away
Greg Stucker made the comment Wednesday during a tire test at Lowe's Motor Speedway. Stucker told me in January that he was hopeful that the new tire could be used in a race in 2010, but the timeline has since changed.
Stucker said that Goodyear met with NASCAR officials on Tuesday to update series officials on the progress of the new tire.
"We feel like we've still got some work to do,'' Stucker said. "We're certainly seeing some performance advantages, which was one of the goals. There are a few things we're not comfortable with yet as far as the overall footprint shape, the way the tire interacts. We think we've got some thing to improve before we put it on the race track. I'd say there's an outside chance we could be on a race track by the end of this year (for testing) but I'd say it's a little more long term than that. There are still a lot of things that have to happen before you put it in the race. We're a couple of years out before we do that. It's going to be some fairly significant changes we think.''
The new tire is 17 inches in diameter. The current tire is 15 inches in diameter. The new tire is 1.5 inches wider.
What Goodyear likes about the new tire: "We're able to have a little bit more durable package. The tire is going to be wider and with it being taller actually elongates the footprint, makes it longer. By having a wider footprint that means more cornering power that translates, basically into more grip.