9/17/04

TIRE LETTER #1

Such a great article about the fuel tire issue. Forrest Lucas is right: quit now and don't start again until this issue is resolved! Just take a look at what happened with the space shuttle.  The problem wasknown and rationalized away.

Thanks for the article.  Keep up the great work!

Dean Cassano
Lakeland, FL

TIRE LETTER #2

I spent 30 years of my life in the tire business.....much of it as a member of a group of volunteers that worked with the full time people in the racing division supplying technical support to teams. We spent a lot of time, effort, and expense to develop a nitro tire, only to have NHRA protect Goodyear by adopting, at Goodyear's urging, rules that took us out of the game by requiring a front tire be the same brand as the drive tires. We had not put any effort into a front and did not have one capable of safely running the speeds at that time. Frankly, the fronts just hold up the hot rod....it's the drives that win races, eh?! 

Goodyear is correct in their statement that they don't make any money on their tires at the tracks. The funding and budgets normally come from the Advertising departments in these companies, not the R&D functions. The technology gained from racing is utilized to make better tires for the street. I'm sure all tire companies including Hoosier have equipment that will load and spin the tires at the speeds we're running today, however the heat history generated by the burnout and downtrack spinning would be very difficult to replicate. 

The comment about shorting the cure cycle is outrageous. No tire engineer would stand for that, nor would the quality people let a tire out of the plant should that take place. The quality standards on a racing tire are tremendous, to the point that any performance defect results in an immediate destruction of that unit. Minor appearance flaws might make it out....(but) never a performance abnormality. Frankly, I'm amazed that Goodyear, or any other manufacturer, can produce a tire that large that lives at 300+ mph. The ones I had some direct experience with were growing in circumference approximately 6" at 250 mph. Those tires are in fact another gear. Belted radial tires don't exhibit this growth, something that might warrant consideration, but there goes the speed and here comes the cost. 

I understand Mr. and Mrs. Lucas' concern and share the pain of the Russell family, but Goodyear shouldn't bear the full extent of this problem. In my opinion, the fans would see better and more teams competing if something was done to bring them back to 275-300 mph.  Taking fuel percentage out makes them add static compression and blower overdrive....back to 320+. Taking out wing angle and raising tire pressure makes them redistribute the weight on the cars, motor placement, drive angles, driver location, etc. The only issue that makes sense it to reduce the overall wing size and height, and limit the blower overdrive...both items readily available for monitoring.

Of course, all this is personal opinion and certainly doesn't come from any engineering school or direct experience with current products.  It's just some thoughts by a person that's been in the sport since 1955 at a bunch of levels. I'm sure there's people working on all this from a bunch of different angles and companies. It'll get fixed....... 

Ron Evans

TIRE LETTER #3

I want to congratulate you guy's on a great article. The comment I want to make is this, I think Goodyear tire and rubber Co. is doing everything possible to fix this tire problem. I'm no engineer but, I would really like to know if it's the speed causing this or the load at the launch that is the culprit. I have watched a lot of races and watched the tires on a lot of cars, both dragsters and funny cars.  What I see is at the launch the tires are flat across the what would be the tread area of the tire and you can see that the tire is even looking wider at that stage of the race and after the car is down track the tires grow so that the car is riding on the center of the tire. The chunking that I have looked at seems to be at the edges of the tires and not the centers.

I don't know what the answer is but, maybe they can get ESPN to super slow-mo the tires through out the run and get a better picture of what's going on here. I guess the question is how much quicker is the 60-ft times now compared to past 60-ft times. This is just one mans

observations. I still think that the fuel classes are run what you brung and hope you brung enough. I just hope that Goodyear and the NHRA get this fixed for the good of the sport and the safety of the drivers or vice versa. Thank you for the forum to voice my opinion.

Jim