Denny Hamlin said the radically experimental soft tire at Watkins Glen was directionally positive but explained why the falloff decreased as the race went on.
Specifically, there was a point where Ross Chastain and Shane Van Gisbergen went 40 laps on the same set of tires in the middle of the race before they finally gave out enough to get passed out front and they were forced to pit.
Hamlin said the tire laid down a lot of rubber and minimized the amount of tire wear.
“Once you put 36 cars out on the race track, and all of them have the same tires, it fills in the pores of the race track, and then it stops wearing,” Hamlin explained on his Actions Detrimental podcast. “It just seems like, whatever there is in practice, the wear just gets 30% better, or whatever it may be, 50% better. Certainly, they went longer, they lasted longer on race day than they did during practice, and I’m sure they lasted longer than what they did during the test. So, it just shows that NASCAR, Goodyear can get even more aggressive.
“I liked the tire, at least did drop off some. It did have some fall-off. So, it is possible. We thought for the longest time, Goodyear always used to tell us, ‘It’s the surface of the track. If the surface of the track isn’t a certain type, it’s not going to wear.’ We clearly know now they are capable of building a tire that does create wear. So, this was definitely a win for us to try this, and it certainly shows how much more aggressive they can possibly get, and hopefully take this to other race tracks.”
Goodyear is trying something very similar next month at Martinsville Speedway to improve the racing product at short tracks, which are suffering from the same aerodynamic and mechanic grip problems as road courses.