Jeff Gordon said he believes the tire failures that occurred during the Auto Club 400 in Fontana, Calif., on March 23 could be repeated this weekend as the Sprint Cup Series returns to Texas Motor Speedway, another high-speed, intermediate-length track.
“I think we will see issues (at Texas),” Gordon said during his regular media session, at Martinsville Speedway. “We saw issues there last year. I think as a team we are already looking at things that we were doing last year that we can look at trying to improve as far as abusiveness on the tires for Texas.”
Gordon said while he understands racing is better when tires wear down and force teams to employ different strategies, he also questions the safety issues that come with unknowns.
“I have no problem with tire wear,” he said. “I know how to manage tire wear. But when it’s the sidewall, you don’t know if it is the bumps on the back straightaway or the apron in Turn 3 and 4, the speed, the air pressure, the camber?”
While many at Auto Club, including NASCAR officials, attributed the tire failures to teams running lower air pressure than what Goodyear recommended, Gordon said there appeared to be other issues.
Veteran crew chief Donnie Wingo, who works with driver Trevor Bayne on the Wood Brothers’ No. 21 Ford, is among those who don’t anticipate another round of tire issues such as the ones at Auto Club.
“I think that’s more related to flatter tracks like Fontana, Pocono and Indianapolis and to the roughness of the track at Fontana,” he said.
Move to smaller engines? Smaller, less powerful engines appear to be the next big change coming to Sprint Cup cars.
David Wilson, president and general manager of Toyota Racing Development USA, addressed the issue on a NASCAR teleconference this week and said engine changes are in the works. The sport’s participating manufacturers — Toyota, General Motors and Ford — work with NASCAR to get the process started.
“NASCAR is talking to their stakeholders and all of the engine-builders who are party to this process,” he said. “We’re talking between ourselves about the various options, and it’s still in the consideration phase.”
A significant horsepower reduction would lower speeds in an attempt to improve racing and make the cars more relevant to passenger cars that have far less than 800 horsepower. That could be accomplished by changing the crankshafts in the engines. Restrictor plates or tapered spacers also could be used to reduce air flow into the engines and cutting power.
Gordon said he hopes a lot of thought involved.
“What I do like is that they are planning for it with the teams and the manufacturers,” he said. “The engine builders to do it the right way, instead of just throwing a plate on it. That is not the way to go about it. It’s going to take some real planning because we saw some tire issues (at Auto Club Speedway), and if you put less horsepower on us, the tire issues are only going to become greater.”
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