Well, NASCAR, there you go again!
Last week, for the Sprint Cup Allstate Brickyard 400 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the racers encountered tire problems for which Goodyear apparently had no answers. Right-side tires were coming apart at an alarming --- and dangerous --- rate, so NASCAR decided to throw a “competition yellow” flag every 10 to 15 laps, turning a race into a parade, decided by 10-lap’s worth of what we used to call a “trophy dash” to determine the winner.
Goodyear has said since the Indy debacle that the weight of the new race car used in Sprint Cup and the fact that, as we said at the time, there are more g-forces than before on the right-side tires, the company is building a “beefed-up” racing tire for next year’s Brickyard 400. I’d guess they’ll use this new tire at all the banked oval race tracks next year, including Daytona and Talladega.
But NASCAR had another trick up their sleeves for the Nationwide Series race last Saturday at Montreal: Rain tires! (Photos - Above, Ron Fellows won the Nationwide event in Montreal, making him the first winner in NASCAR history to win on rain tires, Below, The huge rear wing and large front air dam, seen here on Dale Earnhardt, Jr's Sprint Cup car, are the visual giveaways of the new Sprint "Car of Tomorrow," now the Car of Today).
Grooved tires, or rain tires, were used two previous times in NASCAR, but never in a points-paying race. In
1999, rain tires were used during Craftsman Truck Series practice at Watkins Glen, NY and in a Sprint Cup exhibition race (in the rain) in Japan in 1997.
According to the TV announcers who couldn’t seem to say it enough, it became the first NASCAR race ever run on rain tires, tires developed by the series’ only supplier, Goodyear.
Sometimes, when a company has a monopoly, they’re not as quick to make improvements and updates as they would if there were at least some competition. Let NASCAR call for bids from other tire-makers for next season for all three of their professional series.
Click below for more on NASCAR, Goodyear and the sport's ongoing tire and safety problems.
The Montreal event started under dark skies and after just 7 laps, the decision was made by NASCAR to bring all of the cars onto pit road under red-flag conditions and bolt on rain tires, windshield wipers, blowers and brake lights. (Carl Edwards won the Pennsylvania 500 at Pocono).
Rain tires? Who knew they even had rain tires for any NASCAR series? NASCAR and Goodyear apparently decided that the situation would be perfect for another tire testing session, another tire test in front of a couple of hundred thousand paying fans and millions watching on TV.
While other racing series, including F1 and IndyCar and many others in Europe and Asia, brave water and rain using tires which have been developed over the course of decades for specific cars and tracks, NASCAR has stubbornly stayed away from the wet like a cat contemplating a filled bathtub.
And using rain tires for the first time happened in a Nationwide event, not in the Sprint Cup. Reminds me of the joke going around when airbags first came out; they were first placed on the driver’s side only, because only the driver, not any passengers, would be concerned with replacing his or her now-wrecked car. Why save the others?
I can imagine officials at NASCAR saying, “let’s try the rain tires in Nationwide races first; if it works out 
okay, maybe we’ll try them in a Sprint Cup event.”
As for the windshield wipers, blowers and brake lights, it was soon obvious that while Goodyear had plenty of rain tires for everyone, some teams were not expecting to race in the rain. (Jacques Villeneuve made at least one off-road foray during the Montreal Nationwide race).
To begin with, only about half the cars had windshield wipers. Why not? How could NASCAR mandate the use of rain tires without telling the teams that they’d better bolt-on a wiper system, even if just for the driver’s side of the windshield?
Even drivers with wipers found keeping their windshields clear almost an impossibility. More than one driver was shown on TV with a squeegee in one hand, trying to clear the fog which formed inside their windshields, with their other hand on the steering wheel, trying to race. (Tony Stewart refuels at Pocono).
Outrageous. This isn’t 1956 and the race was not the French Grand Prix.
NASCAR race cars have thin, plastic “tear-offs” layered on their windshields, so after a few laps of dirt, oil, coolant, hot dog wrappers, beer cans and who-knows-what-else building up on the windshield, their pit crew can easily tear-off that top layer of plastic, revealing an essentially clean windshield for the next few laps. How did the wipers work with the tear-offs? Or did they work at all?
One note on the brake lights: at least one driver said he ran into the car in front of him because that car’s brake light wasn’t working.
Racing with the rain tires allowed the cars to at least stay out on the race track and give a somewhat muted and slowed show for the fans; the race was stopped 20 laps short of its planned length of 68. Paying customers no doubt appreciated NASCAR’s pluck in trying-out rain tires for the first time in front of them; as Eurocentric as that city is, they appreciate the skills of those who race in the wet. (Jacques Villeneuve surveys what's left of his car after hitting another car in front of him at the Montreal race track named for his father, the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve).
Sixteen drivers were on the leap lap for 48 circuits of the 2.71-mile road course which is built on a 
picturesque island, Ile Notre-Dame, in the middle of the St. Lawrence (similar to the Detroit race track on Belle Isle in the Detroit River). Race fans might know of another track north of Montreal at a place called Trois-Rivieres (Three Rivers). I’ve been on that track for some vehicle introductions, especially ones in which the car-maker didn’t want any prying eyes … or cameras. The road course track encircles an old, old cemetery and one of the corners, which passes in front of the cemetery’s main gate, is called, if I remember right, the “Gate of Doom.”
Canadian fans were thrilled because one of their countrymen, Ron Fellows, won the race. Fellows is a world-class road racing driver who was deeply involved with the development of the C6 Corvette and its racing version, the C6R. Fellows was one among several “hired guns” brought to Montreal to replace the car’s usual driver, a driver who may have little, if any, road course racing experience. Some of these racers get confused if they have to turn right.
Second was another Canadian, Patrick Carpentier, best-known to American racing fans for his CART and IndyCar careers. Carpentier made his NASCAR debut on August 4, 2007 --- at Montreal. He’s also competed in the newly-formed A1 Grand Prix series, an interesting and new take on international open-wheel racing (the series has a great website, www.a1gp.com). Marcos Ambrose took third, in just his second year in NASCAR. Jacques Villeneuve started fifth but finished 16th; Villeneuve won the 1995 CART Championship, the 1995 Indianapolis 500 and the 1997 Formula One Championship, making him only the third driver after Mario Andretti and Emerson Fittipaldi to achieve such a feat. No other Canadian has won the Indianapolis 500 or the F1 Drivers' title.
And yes, the race track in Montreal is named for Jacques’ father, Gilles, who was a great Formula One driver. Road race aces Ron Hornaday (also a Nationwide and Craftsman Truck series racer and champion) and Boris Said finished fourth and fifth, respectively. (Carl Edwards won the Pocono Sprint Cup event).
Now that NASCAR has made public their rain tire, when will it be used in Sprint Cup competition? At the very next rainy day which hits a Sprint event? Obviously not, as the Sprint Cup race at Pocono the next day was red-flagged due to rain, and there were no rain tires trotted out by Goodyear to fit on the Sprint cars.
In the course of six days, NASCAR has managed to badly embarrass itself in front of two of the biggest paying crowds of the season and millions of TV viewers. Goodyear also must be held responsible, as well as NASCAR’s system of using only a single supplier when it comes to an item as critical as tires.
Perhaps the best thing to do is throw out the results from the Sprint Cup Allstate 400 and the Nationwide NAPA Auto Parts 200 presented by Dodge at Montreal.
There needs to be a meeting of the minds between NASCAR, Goodyear, team crew chiefs and, most importantly, the racers themselves. NASCAR has made some important strides in the cause of driver safety, but clearly that job is not over and no one should ever be complacent about 3,000-pound cars shooting around on oval tracks and road courses at speeds approaching and even over 200-mph.
These past two races were not the kind of NASCAR needs to be staging; races run as parades with the drivers essentially taken out of the equation is a show which no one wants to watch.
(Ron Fellows takes control of the champagne after winning, on rain tires, the Nationwide event in Montreal).
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