Goodyear Fast Facts — Martinsville
OCTOBER 26, 2021 AT 11:24 AM
NASCAR Cup Series — Race No. 35 – 500 laps / 263 miles
NASCAR Xfinity Series – Race No. 32 – 250 laps / 131.5 miles
NASCAR Camping World Truck Series – Race No. 21 – 200 laps / 105.2 miles
Martinsville Speedway (0.526-mile oval) – Martinsville, Va.
Fast Facts for October 30-31, 2021
Tire: Goodyear Eagle Short Track Radials
Set limits: Cup: 9 sets for the race; Xfinity: 5 sets for the race; Truck: 5 sets for the race
Tire Codes: Left-side — D-4948; Right-side — D-4950
Tire Circumference: Left-side — 2,221 mm (87.44 in.); Right-side — 2,250 mm (88.58 in.)
Minimum Recommended Inflation: Left Front — 10 psi; Left Rear — 10 psi; Right Front — 23 psi; Right Rear — 22 psi
Storyline – Racing on the short track that goes a long way toward crowning NASCAR champions: All three of NASCAR’s national series are in action at Martinsville Speedway this weekend, all with an eye toward setting the final four drivers to contend for a championship the following week. Running so late in the season in Virginia, there is always a chance that the weather could be cold, which makes it more difficult for Martinsville’s concrete corners to take rubber. Goodyear designs its tread compounds to do just that in all weather conditions, thus allowing the corners to take rubber and create a second lane up the track for drivers to be competitive in. The other challenges at Martinsville – the relatively long straightaways, tight corners and lack of banking — require a specific tire construction to handle the hard braking and acceleration the cars experience.
“This playoff race at Martinsville is run here in late October so we expect that the weather may have turned cool in southern Virginia,” said Greg Stucker, Goodyear’s director of racing. “Laying rubber in the concrete corners in the cold is something we’ve worked on over the past several years, and we have come up with a formulation that does that, as well as work for the spring race. We adjusted the tread compounds last season at Martinsville to not only lay rubber but to give the cars more grip. The other key element of the tire is the construction, which we also updated in 2020. Our constructions for Martinsville have to consider that the cars are hard on the brakes entering the corners and hard on the gas exiting, and must be able to handle those conditions.”
Notes – Teams in all three NASCAR series return to Martinsville on same tire set-up: Teams in all three NASCAR national series will run on the same tire set-up at Martinsville this weekend . . . this is the same combination of left- and right-side tires that the Cup and Xfinity cars ran in April and teams in all three series ran last season at Martinsville . . . this is the only track at which NASCAR teams will run either of these two Goodyear tire codes . . . as on most NASCAR ovals one mile or less in length, teams will not run inner liners in their tires at Martinsville.
— Goodyear Racing —
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