NASCAR made official its plans to implement an option tire for a regular season race next month at Richmond Raceway.
In other words, the Cook Out 400 at Richmond will feature six sets of primary tires and two sets of option tires. The option tires are designed to produce greater short term speed at the expense of greater fall off.
Specifically, these are the same tire formulas used in May at the All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro, an event that did not produce the intended results albeit on a freshly paved surface.
Richmond, alternatively, is the most abrasive short track on the schedule.
“The All-Star Race is a great event obviously by itself, but it gives us the opportunity to learn,” Elton Sawyer, NASCAR senior vice president of competition, told NASCAR.com. “This past year, it gave us the chance to try something with tires, and we’re working really hard in NASCAR as well as the folks at the R&D Center to improve the short-track package. So the All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro gave us the opportunity to introduce the option tire, something we’d never done to my knowledge in the history of our sport, to have different compounds during an event.
“As that event unfolded, throughout the weekend, we were still optimistic that we would see something there that would really move the needle on our short-track package. We didn’t get the results at Wilkesboro that we were hoping for, with a very similar opportunity that we had at Bristol where we did see results, and even at Iowa where we did as well. Any time we can put our teams in a position where they have to manage tires, we really see some great racing and we see an entertaining race, so that’s our goal going into Richmond.”
For that race, teams will also have a 45-minute practice session to better understand how to implement their strategies. They will have one set of each tire compounds to work with in that session.
“Once we get through practice, that 45-minute session, we’ll have the ability to work with Goodyear as well as our teams to see the longevity of the option tire, what’s it look like, as well as the prime tire,” Sawyer said. “So we’ll have the ability to make some adjustments once practice is over, but as we go into the weekend, we’ll start with the allotment that was recently decided on by working with Goodyear and ourselves and prior history there.”
Teams will not be able to mix tire compounds during the race. In other words, all four tires at any given time must be either the prime or option tires.
The reason behind the experiment is NASCAR’s continued efforts to improve the short-track racing product with the NextGen car, a platform that has been challenged to create passing and on-track action due to its high grip, low power and aerodynamic qualities.
If this experiment proves successful, it could be implemented in time for the shirt track races in the playoffs — Bristol, Martinsville and Richmond.
“If you look at Richmond not being in the playoffs, it gives us an opportunity to at least try it,” Sawyer said. “I think, as we’ve always laid out, you never say never, and in this situation, I wouldn’t say we wouldn’t introduce the option tire in the playoffs; it would have to be a much deeper discussion after Richmond to see if that’s something that, again, the industry, teams, our broadcast partners, ourselves all are aligned that that’s the right thing to do going forward. But it’s really too early to tell if that would be an option until we get through Richmond.”