NASCAR Cup Series – Race No. 33 – 334 laps / 501 miles
NASCAR Xfinity Series – Race No. 30 – 200 laps / 300 miles
Texas Motor Speedway (1.5-mile oval) – Fort Worth, Tex.
Fast Facts for October 16-17, 2021
Tire: Goodyear Eagle Speedway Radials
Set limits:
Cup: 9 sets for the race;
Xfinity: 5 sets for the race
Tire Codes:
Left-side — D-4976;
Right-side — D-4986
Tire Circumference:
Left-side — 2,224 mm (87.56 in.);
Right-side — 2,248 mm (88.50 in.)
Minimum Recommended Inflation:
Left Front — 19 psi; Left Rear — 19 psi;
Right Front — 52 psi; Right Rear — 48 psi
Storyline – Introducing wear an important factor at Texas: Texas Motor Speedway was repaved in early 2017, and despite the track surface starting to show a little age, it is still considered a low tire wear track. With the surface not naturally wearing tires, Goodyear designs its tread compounds to specifically introduce some wear. Wear is a tire’s friend – when a tire wears, it allows heat to dissipate through the tread and run at a more optimum level.
“Texas has begun to age a little bit, but it is still grouped in with some of the more ‘low wear’ tracks that NASCAR goes to,” said Greg Stucker, Goodyear’s director of racing. “We were able to make a compound change to the right-side tire here last fall to give the cars more grip. We have seen some good results from this tire set-up since then, having run it at Texas, Michigan and Las Vegas already this season. We want tires to wear at Texas because of the speeds these cars are running. Speed generates heat, and as this tire wears, it runs a little cooler and performs well over a long run.”
Notes – NASCAR teams return to Texas on known tire set-up: Teams in both the NASCAR Cup and Xfinity Series will run the same tire set-up at Texas this weekend . . . this is the same combination of left- and right-side tires that these teams ran at Texas in June – Cup in the All-Star race and Xfinity in a points paying race . . . NASCAR teams have also run this same tire set-up at Las Vegas and Michigan, as well as this right-side tire code at Kansas, in 2021 . . . as on all NASCAR ovals greater than one mile in length, teams are required to run liners in all four tire positions at Texas . . . air pressure in those inner liners should be 12-25 psi greater than that of the outer tire.
— Goodyear Racing —