Post by dalejrfan on May 22, 2006 19:39:31 GMT -5
Lack of grip affected many drivers during All-Star Challenge
CONCORD, N.C. -- For the record, Jeff Gordon isn't a big fan of the hard tires that NASCAR mandated for Saturday night's Nextel All-Star Challenge and the upcoming Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe's Motor Speedway.
For the record, he's also tired of talking about it.
"To sum this up, and then I feel we need to get off this, we have this tire for next week,'' Gordon said after finishing third in the wreck-marred All-Star race. "We're all on it and we all have to battle with it and it is what it is.
"There's nothing that's going to change about that.''
There's also little chance tires won't remain a hot topic between now and Sunday's race on the 1.5-mile track. The harder compound Goodyear introduced for the newly paved surfaced played a major role in Saturday's outcome and likely will in the 600.
The problem is in the grip. There apparently isn't much, particularly on cold tires.
When pole-sitter Kasey Kahne got too aggressive on a restart nine laps into the second segment of the three-segment event he got into Mark Martin and started a Talladega-like crash that eliminated almost half of the 20-car field.
"The 600, everybody is going to be cautious,'' Kahne said. "If you're not cautious, you're going to be crashed. You're going to have to take it easy if you want to finish the race.''
One of the biggest complaints was tire "chatter,'' a vibrating sensation that makes the tire feel like it's almost bouncing as a car goes into and out of turns.
Even Jimmie Johnson struggled with it.
"When the car is not handling right, it definitely picks up a chatter,'' he said. "Instead of the tire slipping like it used to, because it is so hard, it chatters now.
"When my car was too tight, the front tires would chatter across the racetrack. It is something we are all paying attention to and trying to understand why, because this is the only track where we have such a severe chatter.''
Johnson's crew chief, Chad Knaus, said nobody knows exactly what will happen in the 600 because most of the runs on Saturday were 15 laps, as opposed to 30 to 35 laps that will occur in NASCAR's longest race.
"It is something that is going to be very, very difficult to deal with next week over the course of 600 miles,'' he said. "Four-hundred laps around here is a long, long time.
"That is one thing our team has been very good at over the past few years is being able to adjust our cars throughout the race, and we are going to have to put some serious thought in to it. We had it show up twice tonight in 15-lap runs and that is going to be difficult to stay on top of.''
The chatter is so bad that Gordon ran two laps on a flat tire because he couldn't tell the difference between the flat and the normal sensation.
"That's how little grip the tire has,'' he said. "You have no idea if you even have a flat tire. I felt like I was running on run-flats.''
But Gordon preferred that over the blown tires that marred last year's 600 in which there were a NASCAR-record 22 cautions on a softer compound.
"I don't necessarily blame Goodyear for this,'' he said. "They had to do something. None of us like it, but I'd rather have this situation than be blowing tires, chunking them out like they did in the tire test.''
Many teams combated the problem Saturday by re-using tires already used on short runs. The "scuffs'' provided better grip, particularly for restarts.
Gordon's biggest complaint is the smaller fuel cell -- 14 gallons instead of 22 -- NASCAR mandated to make sure teams don't push tires for runs longer than 30 to 35 laps.
He said there's no danger of wearing out tires on the new compound.
"I don't necessarily think that we need the fuel cells that we have,'' he said. "I think that's way overboard. Other than that, it is what it is and we're going to do everything we can to make the best of it next week.
"Hopefully, this track loses some grip by October and they can come up with a new tire for it then.''