Goodyear's new tire "at least'' 2 years away

A Goodyear official said today that the new wider, taller tire that should be better suited for the Car of Tomorrow and help with the handling of those cars is now "at least'' 2 years away from being used in a race.

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 litlte 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 litlte bit more durable package. The tire is going to be wider and with it being taller actaully elongates the footprint, makes it longer. By having a wider footprint that means more cornering power that translates, basically into more grip.

# Other Goodyear testing news:

# Goodyear is testing tires at Lowe's Motor Speedway. This is the second and final day. Jimmie Johnson, Kasey Kahne, Marcos Ambrose and Paul Menard are testing. Johnson and Kahne have been doing a lot of work, trying different types of tires. It looks like Goodyear is settling on the right sides being similar to the right sides used at Las Vegas.

Here's Johnson explaining why the Vegas tires work so well: "From a feel standpoint, it seems like there's less movement in the car where at Atlanta going through the bumps, not only is the car following the bumps and the interaction of the tire and the way it was compressing and cycling around, also had the car moving left to right, so as you're going through those sensations it's hard to tell if the car is loose or tight. Then you get to the center of the corner. At that point, usually your condition shows up but you're left with the challenge of "Was I really loose getting in or is it just loose in the center.' It just really confuses you and it takes away your confidence to carry speed in the cornera and affects your confidence in what changes you make to the car and really what is going on. It takes more time and is harder for the teams to find that magical setup to help that tire work right for you.

"This tire if you're tight you're tight. If you're loose, you're loose. it doesn't seem to have an edgy characteristic at the start of a run ... and then in the race run the tire stays consistent.  

Also, speeds are up with the tire Goodyear is looking at using for the All-star and Coke 600 weekends. Times have dropped about half a second.

"I'd say I'm probably going faster than I want to,''' Johnson said. "I think the speeds are a little high right now if we match the perfect construction wtih the perfect compound. I just think we might be going a little too fast to put on a good show but hopefully we can build some fall off in the tire. I'm running 29.20s around here, which is really, really fast.''

Understand he's doing 29.2-second laps during the day. Kyle Busch won the pole for the 600 last year at 29.1 _ when qualifying was done at night. At this rate, you would likely see a sub-29 second lap win the pole in May. Of course there are other factors and if they get the tire to slow down that will help.

# This week Budweiser announced that this year will be its final sponsoring Kenny Bernstein Racing and the last as the official beer of the NHRA. Budweiser had been with the NHRA since the early 1980s and is celebrating it's 30th year with Bernstein. So, what does that mean for Kasey Kahne, who is sponsored by Bud in Cup?

"It's disappointing to see Bernstein without a sponsor, and I think they'll do everything they can to figure it out and get a sponsor,'' Kahne said. "As far as our stuff, we have another year with Budweiser and they've been great to work with. Hopefully we can do things to keep them happy and ... work with them for a long time.''

# Marcos Ambrose is wearing a special helmet at Bristol, Martinsville and Texas that will be auctioned off afterward with proceeds going to help purchase a water tanker for a fire brigade in Australia. Ambrose has been doing a lot to help out in light of the bush fires there. You can find more info on his website.

# More Goodyear testing info and notes:

Goodyear plans to run a right-side tire that is a softer compound at Martinsville to help drivers get a bit more grip.

Goodyear plans to test at Indy with four cars and then test again there in mid-June with about a dozen or so cars to try to avoid the problems that came up in last year's race there in August.

Goodyear plans to test again later this year at Atlanta (likely early summer) since that race date has moved.

Stucker on how the tire performed at Atlanta a couple of weeks ago: "I don't think we dramatically impacted performance one way or the other. We were hoping to have more of an impact than we did. Not to say it's better or worse, we'd like to think we can go back and help it a little bit more.''

Goodyear plans additional Cup tire tests later this year at New Hampshire and Chicago.

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