NASCAR Cup Series — Race No. 12 – 267-laps / 400.5 miles
Kansas Speedway (1.5-mile oval) – Kansas City, Kan.
Fast Facts for May 6-7, 2023
Tire: Goodyear 18-inch Eagle Speedway Radials
Set limits:
Cup: 1 set for practice, 1 set for qualifying and 9 sets for the race
(8 race sets plus 1 set transferred from qualifying)
Tire Codes: Left-side — D-5186; Right-side — D-5190
Tire Circumference: Left-side — 2,263 mm (89.09 in.); Right-side — 2,279 mm (89.72 in.)
Minimum Recommended Inflation:
Left Front — 20 psi; Left Rear — 22 psi;
Right Front — 50 psi; Right Rear — 46 psi
Storyline – Keeping up with Kansas: Visiting Kansas Speedway twice per season, Goodyear is able to keep up with the track surface as it matures. Before the spring ’22 race, as NASCAR moved to the Next Gen car and the 18-inch bead diameter tire, Goodyear made a compound change for the Kansas tires to give the cars more grip. Then, as the sport learned about the Next Gen car and teams continued to find speed, Goodyear tested several tracks, studied race data and updated the construction and mold shape of its speedway tires. That resulted in a new tire set-up for the fall ’22 race at Kansas. The factors that need to be watched this weekend are the air pressure and geometry settings teams run on multiple corners of the car as they continue to look for performance gains.
“One of the biggest parts of our job is keeping up with race tracks as they age, looking at race data and listening to team input for deciding where we need to test to make improvements,” said Greg Stucker, Goodyear’s director of racing. “Kansas was among a group of tracks – along with Las Vegas and Texas – where we adjusted our tire recommendation between the spring and fall races last year. In addition to race data from early 2022, we ran tests at Charlotte, Pocono and Michigan and developed a construction update that we introduced over the second half of last season. Those changes proved successful, so as we keep up with tracks, as well as the evolution of the Next Gen car and team set-ups, that is where we started this season.”
Notes – Cup cars on fall ’22 tire set-up at Kansas: Cup teams ran this same combination of left- and right-side tires at Kansas-2 last September . . . they have also run this same tire set-up twice already this season – at Fontana and Las Vegas . . . with this 18-inch tire, and its lower profile sidewall, Cup cars will not run inner liners in any of their tires in 2023.