Goodyear Fast Facts — Indianapolis
GOODYEAR TIRE NOTES
NASCAR Cup Series – Race No. 24 – 82 laps / 200 miles
Indianapolis Motor Speedway (2.439-mile road course) – Indianapolis, Ind.
Fast Facts for August 12-13, 2023
Tire: Goodyear Eagle 18-inch Road Course Radials
Set limits: 1 set for practice, 1 set for qualifying and 6 sets for the race
(5 race sets plus 1 set transferred from qualifying)
Tire Codes: Left-Front/Right-Rear: D-5212; Right-Front/Left-Rear: D-5213
Tire Circumference: 2,275 mm (89.57 in.)
Minimum Recommended Inflation:
Left Front — 22 psi; Right Front — 20 psi;
Left Rear — 17 psi; Right Rear — 17 psi
Storyline – Cup teams ready for back-to-back road courses: In recent years, the NASCAR Cup circuit has increased the number of road and street courses it runs on, and this weekend we start a two-week stretch on left-right circuits. This week’s stop is at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and its 14-turn, 2.439-mile course. Having run at Circuit of The Americas, Sonoma Raceway and the Chicago street course already this season, Cup teams are very familiar with the Goodyear tire set-up. Goodyear’s directionally mounted road course tires are designated for specific corners of the car, different than the normal left-side/right-side combinations run on ovals. The two tire codes — one on left-front and right-rear tire positions and one on the right-front and left-rear — are all, in reality, the same tire. The difference is that mounting them directionally on the wheel allows Goodyear to build each of the two codes and decorate the outboard sidewall while having the tread run directionally to handle the different stresses asked of it – hard braking into the corners and hard acceleration off.
“We went to this system on one tire with two codes on road courses last season,” said Greg Stucker, Goodyear’s director of racing. “Mounting directionally on all four corners of the car helps protect the beveled tread splice of the tire. This allows the tread splice to be ‘closed’ on both front tires under the force of braking and on both rear tires under the force of acceleration. The other benefit over having just one code is that it helps teams designate which corner of the car each tire is optimally designed for.”
Notes – Cup teams on standard road course tire set-up at IMS: Being on 18-inch bead diameter tires, NASCAR Cup teams will run a different tire set-up than those in the NASCAR Xfinity Series on the Indianapolis road course this week . . . this is a different tire set-up than these teams ran at IMS last year, featuring a compound change to give the cars more grip and introduce more tire wear and fall-off in lap times over the course of a run . . . this tire set-up debuted at COTA in March and has been subsequently run at Sonoma and Chicago . . . with this 18-inch tire, and its lower profile sidewall, NASCAR Cup cars will not run inner liners in their tires.
Wet Weather Tires – Goodyear brings white-lettered “wets” to Indy: Goodyear will bring its 18-inch wet weather radials to Indianapolis for use by teams in the NASCAR Cup Series, should NASCAR decide that conditions warrant . . . the tread pattern on this tire is based on Goodyear’s Eagle Supercar 3 consumer tire . . . NASCAR Cup teams last ran a wet weather tire in competition Chicago street course last month . . . in addition to the obvious difference of a tread pattern versus Goodyear’s dry weather “slick” tires, the “Goodyear” and “Eagle” lettering on the sidewalls of the wet weather tires is white, not the standard yellow.