CARS Tour experiences more tire woes on South Boston practice day

It took just one race for the conversation about tire code discrepancies to once again return to the pit area of a CARS Tour race, this time in the second weekend back on the Hoosier F45s on Friday during practice day at South Boston Speedway.

Several teams reported, at best, speeds slowing down three tenths to a half second on mock stickers but, at worst, tires starting to wind apart three laps into a run.

So once practice ended, there were numerous meetings huddled together around the Virginia bullring from various teams talking to each other and sharing their experiences to meetings with Hoosier, the regional distributor and officials from the sanctioning body.

Brandon Pierce of Carroll Speedshop has concerns about the tires even making it to the finish on Saturday night based on this happening to his after three laps.

“We had Ronnie Bassett parked right beside us,” Pierce said. “He’s on the same code as me and had a similar issue.

“So, Ronnie put his 40 lap old tires back on that he came over here, tested on, practiced on today and, and went right back to where he was. So I told Kip (Childress, CARS Tour executive director) that I’m okay missing the setup when Lee Pulliam and Barry Nelson can miss it. We all can miss it.

“My thing is a safety thing. I don’t think that tire will make it 125 laps. And that was what my complaint was. And beyond, and I’ve told you this before, I don’t care if we run ST1s, 2s, 12, F45s, 50s as long as its consistent.”

Pierce said all this garage wants is a tire, no matter what compound it is, to just come from the same batch ‘that was cured at the same time’ and no matter what it produced, at least it’s the same for everyone.

“So that’s been the biggest flaw I think in this weekend, that there are now some discrepancies and we just had a meeting amongst ourselves and found out we have up to six or seven codes when we thought there we three so it’s exactly what we had at Wake.”

That is a reference to the race last month at Wake County Speedway where teams unloaded to seven different codes amongst 19 teams, leading to a threatened boycott of the race following an entire summer of inconsistencies but being resolved by tire swapping and a decision to move from the ST2s back to the familiar F45s.

There were no issues on Labor Day weekend at Florence but that did not last into Friday at South Boston.

Pierce said it was important that the teams got together to see if this problem was more than a set-up dilemma.

“We’re all here spending the money together, so let’s just all be honest with each other,” Pierce said. “That’s my biggest thing. I operate that way in day to day life, let’s just all just be honest because I don’t think anybody enjoys coming to the racetrack when the biggest question mark is the four black things we buy and bolt onto our car.

“It’s very, very frustrating because I promise you these are some of the smartest people in the industry in this pit area and there’s not been a single one of them this year that’s been able to adjust a car for bad tires and they’re not going to start.

“It’s not going to happen.”

Andrew Grady echoed those sentiments, pondering if it was even worth it to come back on Saturday.

“We got the car really good,” Grady said. “We wound up 10th in the last round, next to last round, and then it took a turn when we bolted on the set of stickers we bought here to mock up on and I slowed down over half a second; so did three or four other guys.

“And man, at this point, I don’t know what the answer is but too much money, time and effort goes into this for something like that to be such a big factor. Brandon Pierce’s tire actually was coming apart and it was a three lap tire.

“You don’t want a tire to come apart anywhere, but when you’re out a place that has this much speed, if a tire comes apart and it’s a right front or really any tire, it’s gonna hurt.”

And that was the biggest point Pierce wanted to emphasize too — that he felt this is unsafe.

“I’m leaving here tonight and it’s unknown what’s going to happen,” Pierce said. “I do know there’s quite a bit of conversation going on right now with some bigger teams and maybe they can make a little more headway.

“But this is a safety issue. This tire had three laps on it and we have 125 tomorrow night and I don’t feel comfortable racing on that. My race set is the same code as that set. So I’m going home tonight and hope to get a phone call from Kip or someone that we have a plan B for tomorrow.

“If not, I’m gonna come in here and we’re gonna work hard but I’d be lying to you and everybody else who said we aren’t gonna be a little anxious about it ’cause uh, that’s a big concern. For sure.”

Childress, for his part, had a busy evening checking in with teams who told him they wanted to eliminate the ‘up to speed lap’ in qualifying because they all felt they would need every lap to reach 125 on Saturday night.

So, he approved that for Saturday.

Because tires have been the talk of the garage all season, Childress also wonders if teams are just overanalyzing them too much.

“I think one of the things that we notice, that I’ve noticed is that they spent a lot of time today on the racetrack getting their car dialed up on tire they brought from home or somewhere else and they all don’t have the same age on them,” Childress said. “So I think what happens is they get themselves so tuned up to that tire that when they do go and bolt on this brand new tire that they’ve not been out on the race track with yet, the car is going to react differently.

“There’s a part of me that wishes they would start testing today on this weekend’s tires but we try to get out of telling them what to do when it comes to that because they are trying to learn as much as they can and we want to give them the space to do that.”

Childress is doing his due diligence with Hoosier today but he also does think teams are figuratively gun shy about tires after this summer.

“What we have learned throughout this season is that teams are paying a lot closer attention to their tires now and it wasn’t something they didn’t worry as much about,” Childress said. “They’ve gotten a lot smarter when it comes to tires.

“I don’t want to say they’re too smart bow but I do think they are overanalyzing a little bit. I told all of them, and I think they found a little peace with this is that we want everyone on the same playing field and if they’re all losing three tenths, that’s the same playing field.

“Some of the teams did bring up the markings on the tires, and a lot of the key Hoosier guys are at Watkins Glen for ARCA, but I do plan to have conversations with them but one engineer has already told me they don’t see anything unusual … it’s part of their process when they’re building the tires.

“But I’m going to get some more data on that, and as long as the tires are safe and the same, that’s our goal.”