Ohhhh where to begin.
The Indy race result was a function of the track not rubbering in. Period. Why? Who knows. Goodyear's rubber turned to dust! Running a test with the COT wouldn't have made any difference or given GY any information that would have helped them. Why? A green racetrack has much higher wear than one that has been rubbered in. Typically a tire test doesn't have nearly as many cars or nearly as many laps as a full race. The track will not rubber in. As such, in any given year you would expect the wear to be really bad during a test. At that point you COULD run a super hard compound, but then when the track DOES rubber in, the tires don't wear at all and you'll have a low grip Atlanta situation. So you have to use your best knowledge and assume wear will improve when rubber gets laid down.
For whatever reason, GY's tires at Indy didn't put any rubber down this year, even though the tire was very similar to previous. They got caught out. It happens. Not much you can do when you're cording tires and scrubbing them against a diamond ground track at 210mph.
As a side note to Atlanta, there was frost on the track a day or two before the race. Race tires do not work cold. Goodyear coulda pulled the race.. but that wouldn't have gone over too well.
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It's not like Michelin, who were in competition and built a tire that was just a little too 'hot'.
Michelin at Indy in '05 was not a tire that was 'too hot,' with a compound too soft or grippy. They seriously underestimated the loading with the banking, and had a construction that was not up to the task.
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Tony Stewart mainly complained about blowing tires.
Tony's complaint at Atlanta was about grip and breakaway traction. Try driving summer tires at the limit when its 35-40 degrees out. They can be very twitchy when it comes to breakaway, so you are driving a HANDFUL mid corner.
Grip level isn't really a huge concern in this series if your lap times are plus or minus a second from a previous season. Its how
controllable the tire is at the limit.
Tony DID blow out a tire and go into the wall at a race not too long after (it was shortly before the Pocono test), but that was because Zippy made a little gamble. He ran
98 laps on a set, corded em, and then blew em. Play big to win big.. or lose big.
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In my experience with Goodyear, they throw compound after compound at the track when testing. They make upteen different very small changes in the oils or carbon to try to get where they need to be. Bridgestone and Michelin don't have nearly as many tire compounds. They change the carcass. If they need to get a little heat into or out of the tire, they vary tread gauge. Goodyear seems like they're caught in a 30 year time warp and thing that they can compound their way out of a problem. They seem to have a very limited knowledge of tire construction, and further, they don't seem to acknowledge that tire construction is a very big deal.
You may have ran Goodyear tires before, but this quote above is completely false. I won't elaborate, but its completely off base on almost every level.
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The criticism that Tony Stewart had of Goodyear was 100% on the money, IMO. He's right, they got out-gunned in American Open Wheel and Formula 1.
GY smoked Bridgestone in F1 in '97. In '98, GY scored I believe more points average per team, and was either dead even or just ahead of Bridgestone in total points. Bridgestone was ahead at some tracks, Goodyear ahead at others. Goodyear typically well outperformed Bridgestone in wet races. Could just as easily have been Ferrari as the constructor's champ if Schumi had not made a few big mistakes.
Why did GY pull out of F1? Money. And that's the truth. If you recall, they were doing very poorly financially in the late 90s and early 2000's. Stock at ~$3/share. F1 as you can imagine is very expensive, so they pulled out.
IRL is another story, Firestone definitely had their act together. Won't elaborate on how they won, but again.. to get back on top of IRL would have been way too expensive for a company on the edge and trying to reform. They spent too long managing the rest of their business poorly and it put them real deep in the hole.
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What kind of pressures are they running in these tyres?
Minimum cold inflations range between 10 and 58 psi. Tires are run capped (or at least in theory) so at 250-300F operating temp you can imagine what the pressure buildup is from 58.. a little pv=NRT puts it at about 80psi hot.
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These cars weigh 3400 lbs and run on a 11x27 tire on a 9.5x15 wheel.
27.5x12-15 technically, but yes on a 9.5x15 wheel. And they generate more downforce than you might think.
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I was thinking about this, and it makes my point. If the 'guy with the most camber gain wins', then that is something that Goodyear can control with the build of the carcass. Tire construction is incredibly powerful with respect to car handling, in my opinion, more than any other suspension component. Goodyear is producing a tire that you say needs a lot of camber gain to be fast. Well, if that's what is causing blown tires, then produce a construction that works better with less camber gain. It's a chicken-egg situation. The teams wouldn't go into weird setup areas (like massive camber gains) if it weren't faster. Goodyear is the one that holds those keys.
Yes and no. You can make the tire more of a brick and like less camber, but teams are still going to push the limit. Run a soft tire at 10 degrees camber or a stiff one at 5 degrees, you're still putting a heap of pressure down.
The cars don't have enough tire. Nascar at Indy sees more severe loading than IRL, even with IRL's increased downforce. Mass and CG height are a bitch
Word on the street is Nascar is giving GY the green light to develop a larger tire and hopefully a better wheel, which is a big help.
That said, you WOULD think GY would go after somethin that doesn't like as much camber.
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I thought last year they had to run minimum pressures decided by Goodyear? To hard to police? With all the rules NASCAR has they could set up minimum static camber also.
Very difficult to police. There's ways of teams to cheat it. Minimum static camber wouldn't do much, you can set up your suspension to do all sorts of wild stuff mid corner.
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Other manufacturer's tires generally do not exhibit the same tendencies. The side force you gain by adding camber helps to a point, but then it starts pulling enough contact patch off the ground that there is an early point of diminishing returns. You don't go for the big camber numbers because it doesn't make the car faster.
Not an apples to apples comparison. Not even apples to oranges. More like apples to orangutans. Look at a Michelin or Dunlop Le Mans tire. Wide with a low aspect ratio. By nature that shape is going to behave much differently with respect to camber. Hell, even look at Goodyear's Stock Car Brazil tires.
Can only really make "another manufacturer" comparison if there WAS another manufacturer in Nascar. Last time Hoosier was in Cup, teams weren't running the outrageous amount of camber, and bump-rubbered setups they do now.
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My point is that GY haven't made a great tire for over a decade, either in motorsports or in retail. Michelin are the standard bearer in both sectors and it's enthusiasm for cars, motorsports and technology can be seen in every way the company showcases itself. GY do nothing to advance the state of the art or to invest themselves in the public sphere and unsurprisingly the best they can do with their products is just struggle to keep up with the competition.
Completely off base. Michelin and Bridgestone make some very good products, and Goodyear is right there with them. Summer tires.. look at the Michelin Pilot PS2, Bridgestone RE050A PP, and Goodyear GS-D3. Michelin is best in the dry, Goodyear dominates in the wet, and Bridgestone is about mid way between. All very close. I think Goodyear might have the most friendly pricing.
Dunlop (a Goodyear brand) winter tires, are very good and right at the same level as Bridgestone Blizzaks.
The Dunlop Z1 Summer/Auto-X tire will meet or beat the Falken Azenis series in lap times, and certainly beats it in price.
As for motorsport.. how many competitive series are Michelin and Bridgestone in right now? Bridgestone.. sole supplier in F1. Firestone, sole supplier in IRL. Bridgestone was sole supplier in ChampCar, and is now sole supplier in Formula Nippon and I believe GP2. Michelin pulled out of F1 for the same reason GY did. Too much cost, not enough benefit.
It's easy to jump on the anti-GY bandwagon, but get some stuff straight first. They're not quite the joke that most make them out to be. You'll notice that Nascar fans bitch a lot, drivers bitch a lot, but the team engineers don't. When was the last time you hear Chad Knaus bitch GY out? Zippy? Tony Eury?
All that said, they do have a LOT to improve. They need better compounds, they need this new tire size, they need to publicly clear their name instead of just issuing little PR reports here and there. It would be great if they went back after F1 or ALMS or
somethin. Instead somehow they choose to continue in Top Fuel and Nascar which are notoriously brutal on tires
Who knows why..
