Goodyear to introduce new left-side tire compound for Sunday’s Cup race at Martinsville
For Sunday’s Cup Series playoff race at Martinsville Speedway (2 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App), Goodyear will introduce a new left-side tire compound as it continues to fine tune its tire combinations on short tracks this season.
Earlier this season, Goodyear introduced the option tire for the All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro Speedway and was used again in the summer at Richmond Raceway. It was a softer right-side tire that generated more speed on the shorter run but wore out quicker than the standard tire during the course of a green-flag run.
Goodyear will use the option tire compound as the standard right-side tire for Sunday’s Round of 8 finale, while the left-side tire will be one of the company’s softest compounds.
“This year has been one of great development and advances on our short-track tire package,” said Greg Stucker, Goodyear’s director of racing. “The option tire that we ran at both North Wilkesboro and Richmond has been designed to give the Cup cars more grip early in a run and have lap times fall off more later. We come to Martinsville with that same right-side tread compound as part of the setup teams will run, along with a left-side tire that utilizes the ‘softest’ tread compound in our tire lineup. Martinsville is a tricky track for many reasons — not only the time of year we race there, but also the layout with the tight, concrete corners. We had a good test there in August and came out of it with this setup, which is another step forward on our short track package.”
To get teams and drivers acclimated to the new tire setup, NASCAR will hold an extended 45-minute practice session on Saturday at Martinsville.
“We did some testing at Martinsville back in August, which has created a new, even softer left-side tire,” said Brad Moran, NASCAR Cup Series managing director. “All the tires will be new there. We do have the extended practice. They have an additional set of practice tires to do some adjustments. We sure hope it creates some interesting racing, and how it’s all going to work out, it’s one of those deals where we’re really not going to know until we get them all out there on Sunday.”
At Martinsville, Cup teams will get two sets of tires for practice, one set for qualifying and 10 sets for the race (nine race sets plus one set transferred from qualifying).
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