NASCAR pooh-poohs idea of tire test team
“You’ve got to have the best drivers and teams you can test tires," Pemberton said. “You can’t have guys that don’t stand on the gas test tires. You can’t have retired guys test tires because they’re not going to get the most out of it.
“People who haven’t been tire testing or haven’t raced for a living can over-simplify it and say, ‘Just go get a test team and get a guy off a different series and test.’ There’s a reason they’re not in this level. You want guys on this level that know what they need."
Goodyear has attempted to have a test team for other racing series.
“We don’t feel that is the best way to do it," Goodyear Director of Race Tire Sales Greg Stucker said Friday. “The guys that are out here running every week are the closest to the cars, they’re closest to the engines, they’re close to the tires, they’re close to the race tracks – they’re the guys that could give us the most help, the most feedback.
“They’re also the guys that are going to be in race conditions. That is the sort of data that you want to gather. That’s the sort of information you want. If you have somebody that does nothing but testing, you can do some fundamental things, but you can’t do what we eventually want to do and that is to eventually find the right combination."
Stucker said Goodyear left Atlanta in December believing officials had found an adequate tire.
“We … walk out of there thinking, ‘We have a pretty good package here. This is going to be reasonable, we think we’ll be good for the stop and we’ll be OK,’ " Stucker said. “You’re not going to know for sure until you get to the race weekend and you’ve got 43 Cup guys or 43 Nationwide guys out there all at once in race trim, in race conditions, trying to pass one another.
“We can test a lot, but the ultimate evaluation, the ultimate test is certainly going to be the race event."