Goodyear officials have sent the tires that were on Kyle Busch’s car when it wrecked in Sunday’s Daytona 500 for further testing. Busch lost control, spun and collected several other cars, including Dale Earnhardt Jr., who was leading the race at the time. On Wednesday morning’s ‘The Morning Drive on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, Goodyear director of racing Greg Stucker said Busch’s tires arrived Tuesday at company headquarters in Akron, Ohio. ‘Our engineers went over them very thoroughly, just to make sure we didn’t miss anything at the racetrack, Stucker said. ‘We feel we didn’t. We sent them down to our research facility, where we have forensic specialists if you will, that can really do a deep dive into all the different components, all the different parts of the tire and look at them in a lot more detail than you can visually with electron microscopes and a lot of other different tools they have at their exposure. It’s very impressive some of the detail they can go into and we’ll find out as much as we can. That takes a little bit of time to do, but that’s in the works.(NBC Sports)(3-2-2017)
UPDATE Goodyear has refuted Kyle Busch’s claim that a flat tire caused his spin in the Daytona 500. Busch blamed the crash on a rear tire that went flat and said, ‘You know, obviously Goodyear tires just aren’t very good at holding air. Goodyear general manager of worldwide racing Stu Grant said definitive video evidence showed that all four tires on Busch’s #18 Toyota were up when it began to spin. Speaking before Sunday’s Cup race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Grant said no cuts were found on Busch’s tires at the track or at Goodyear’s technical center and research facility in Akron, Ohio. Technicians also analyzed broadcast video to determine that Busch’s right rear was up when the car spun. Goodyear contacted the NASCAR R&D Center for additional video to verify the left rear was up.(NBC Sports)[More]
