Bowyer, Harvick, Suarez comment on the tire compound at Dover

Clint Bowyer: “It’s a weird rubber.”

The tire from Goodyear plays tricks at Dover International Speedway. They’ll rubber in the track, work the groove up the banking and following a caution they’ll have to start the process all over again. As cars coast around under yellow, all the rubber is picked up.

This does other tricky things as well. If a driver stays out under caution, his warm tires will pick up fall more loose rubber than the drivers who pitted for 4 fresh but cold tires. This makes restarts on worn tires harder than usual.

Goodyear Tire Codes:
Left-side — D-4728; Right-side — D-4742

“It’s a weird rubber. It’s a weird tire that we have with Goodyear at this concrete track,” Clint Bowyer stated from the Dover International Speedway media center.

“It really puts it down fast. We saw that even Friday with the Trucks and Xfinity. Then, as soon as the caution comes out, it’s like our cars are vacuum sweepers.”

“You can go out there and pick it up. It’s a white track within 5 laps. You’re right back fighting the same challenges as it rubbers up again on the entry, exit and through the middle.”

“That’s what makes it fun. That’s what makes it unique. Very unique race track from everything we go to. When you run that bottom, you squirt the middle because the corners are so long, you gotta lift, you gotta have a car that rotates.”

“As you’re out there racing with everybody all day long you can see the cars that do that well and the one’s that don’t. Then, you can see them try to free it up to try make it do that. Then they’re loose and it won’t turn.”

“That’s fun for me. And what makes this place unique and challenging.”

Kevin Harvick leads Brad Keselowski at Dover International Speedway
DOVER, DE – MAY 06: Kevin Harvick, driver of the #4 Jimmy John’s Ford, leads a pack of cars during the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series AAA 400 Drive for Autism at Dover International Speedway on May 6, 2018 in Dover, Delaware. (Photo by Robert Laberge/Getty Images)

Kevin Harvick

“You never really know how it’s going to go after they blow the whole race track off and there’s no rubber on the race track anymore. Lap 12, for whatever reason, it was the button on my car. It would really allow me to start opening the race track back up and move around the race track.”

“I could tell that Clint was loose. My car at that particular point was really good. I wanted to move up the race track and put as much pressure on him as I could. I felt like the more rubber that got put on the race track, the less the front end was going to turn through the center of the corner.”

“At that point, it was turning really good. I could put the power down. We wound up being a whole lot looser than we were the whole race, the last run. But, it sounded like the whole field was.”

Daniel Suarez

“I think Clint just hit it right there. I like this place a lot because how everything changed from the start of the run to the end of the run,” Daniel Suarez says after finishing 3rd.

“It’s funny what Clint just mentioned with the vacuum. That’s exactly how it looks from driving the race car. It’s black. Then, two laps after, it’s clean. If it’s not clean, you see a lot of lines from the tires.”

“Because of that, it makes it a lot of fun as a driver. How you have to adapt to those situations.”

Goodyear Tire
Goodyear Tire
Goodyear Tire Notes: Dover

Goodyear is aware of this. It’s partially by design. In fact, their pre-race tire notes mirrored the quotes from the drivers above.

“There are a lot of factors that come into play when designing and building a tire set-up for Dover,” said Greg Stucker, Goodyear’s director of racing said ahead of the weekend.

“With 24 degrees of banking in the corners, Dover is an extremely fast track that generates a lot of load. Our right-side tire is designed to handle all that, and is also the tire that is charged with laying rubber on the concrete surface.”

“What fans will notice is Dover’s white surface turning black with rubber as the weekend progresses. During the races, under caution when the cars are not at speed and actively laying rubber, the hot tires will actually pick up some of the rubber back off the track surface. Once the race goes back under the green flag, this right-side compound will quickly lay rubber down again.”

NASCAR EVP on the Tire

“Certainly we didn’t see any failure problems. We saw good racing. We saw rubber go down. I think they’ve done a really good job over the years, developing that tire for Dover,” NASCAR Senior VP of Competition, Scott Miller explains on ‘The Morning Drive’ via Sirius XM NASCAR Radio.

Links

Goodyear | Dover International Speedway | NASCAR

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