A top DEI official stated Monday afternoon that the company would be using Hoosier tires on at least one car they will test at Lakeland Speedway later this week. One of the burning questions since Goodyear started leasing, instead of selling, tires to race teams was where would the teams to get tires to test with away from the seven official NASCAR test sessions. While it was widely speculated teams would turn to Hoosier for the tires needed to test, most teams had a sufficient stockpile to get them through the 2006 season. A DEI executive confirmed Monday that organization’s stockpile was almost gone. In fact, it was low enough that at least one of the their teams testing at Lakeland Speedway later this week would do so on Hoosier tires. “It’s working,” said the executive of NASCAR’s desire to reduce the amount of testing teams could do away from the official tests. “The lack of tires has forced us to rethink how we test and what we test. At Lakeland we won’t be able to compare one car against another. We’ll look more to establish a baseline and then gauge our improvement based on the incremental speeds after each change. How that will relate to a race set-up we just don’t know yet.”(Circletrackplus.com)(1-15-2007) UPDATE: hearing that #25-Casey Mears, an Hendrick Motorsports unmarked Chevy COT, the #20 Home Depot team [no idea on driver] and an unmarked Joe Gibbs Racing Chevy COT tested at USA Speedway/Lakeland on Wednesday and were running Hoosier Tires. AND #5-Kyle Busch will test Hendrick Motorsports’ COT today at Lakeland.(St Petersburg Times)(1-18-2007) UPDATE 2: #5-Busch was joined at Lakeland Thursday by #24-Jeff Gordon…both COT testing.(PRN’s Garage Pass Radio Show); AND hearing all three DEI teams were there testing COT with the Dale Earnhardt Jr, Martin Truex Jr. and Paul Menard. Bill Davis Racing’s #36-Jeremy Mayfield tested a Toyota COT and will be back on Friday. Hendrick Motorsports tested with #25-Mears, #5-Busch and Gordon in an un-numbered Hendrick Chevy Impala.(1-19-2007)
