Thoughts/rant on tires, etc.

With all the tire problems at Pocono and the last couple of years, I think it's time to bring back the tire war as some of the commenters of this blog have mentioned.

I'm not sure how long most of you have been fans, but back when I started following NASCAR, they had a choice of Hoosiers or Goodyear, which they called a tire war.  NASCAR, in their infinite wisdom decided that one tire manufacturer would be better and signed with Goodyear and it's been that way for a long time.  But maybe it shouldn't be that way.

I read an article last year about Firestone being interested in providing tires for NASCAR and they were supposedly working on a tire to show to NASCAR, I haven't heard anything else on it.

I think it's time for NASCAR to open it up again and let different tire manufacturers produce a tire, get NASCAR's approval for safety, etc. and let the teams decide which tire they want to use.  Even if they only bring back the old tire war of Hoosier and Goodyear, I think it would be better than it is now, give the teams a choice.

Most everyone said the rumble strips are hard on tires, this year they have the softer compound tire, what do you think will happen at the road courses where they are always running over those rumble strips?  Hopefully, they'll have the right mindset and use the old tires from last year, or at least a harder compound tire for the road courses.

All this talk about proposed changes in scheduling of the Busch races to help boost the series won't work.  I don't think coupling the Busch Series with IRL for weekends would really "help" the Busch Series like NASCAR thinks.  Helping the series is NASCAR's "reasoning," but I think it's more to try and quell the complaints about Cup drivers running in the series.  This would put more Cup/Truck weekends together, do you really think that the Cup drivers that want to get the "feel" of the track or the ones that just love to race, won't jump in a truck and join the races?  If this proposed change happens, I bet you'll see more Cup drivers in the Craftsman Truck Series.

On to the Craftsman Truck Series.  I've watched this series since it's beginning and granted, it is getting more promotion and coverage, mainly due to the Speed Channel, I still think NASCAR could do more to promote it.  As an example, a few weeks back, when both the Busch Series and Cup Series were running night races on Friday and Saturday night, the truck race was on Sunday afternoon, that's no biggie in itself.  The problem came on NASCAR's website, once the Cup race was run on Saturday night, they took down the scheduling and everything for that weekend, you had to dig through their pages to find anything on qualifying, practice or anything about the truck race.  Granted, it is considered the lowest tier of the big three, but it is one of the big three and should be promoted more by NASCAR.

Ending on a lighter, happier note, Rusty Wallace has the longest streak of races run without a DNF, currently 27 races.  Hopefully, my bragging about it doesn't jinx him for Michigan.