Tire woes: Ay, there's the rub

By DAVID GREEN

What a "tire-ing" season this has been. From Formula One's U.S. Grand Prix fiasco to last weekend's Lowe's Motor Speedway pop-fest, it's been one of the worst years for the tire industry since the Ford-Firestone hoopla of a few years ago.

The F1 situation is easy enough to understand. First, you have competition among tire suppliers. As folks in NASCAR well know, that leads to a smaller margin of error on the competitive side and less emphasis on durability. To further complicate matters, the powers that be in grand prix racing prohibited routine tire changes after time trials, so the drivers had to qualify and then race on the same four tires.

In NASCAR, it's a little more curious just why there have been so many races this year with so many tire-failure problems. Goodyear has the market cornered. The company is not going to get beat by a competitor. So, why has it had such numerous problems this year?

Well, NASCAR had rules changes, too. Although they were not as drastic as F1's action, they did place the tire supplier in a bit of a dilemma. Changes in the aerodynamic package meant a loss of aero grip. To compensate, teams had to increase mechanical grip. A softer-compound tire would be one theoretical tool with which to accomplish that. Diminished inflation pressure would be another.

As William Shakespeare phrased it in Hamlet, "ay, there's the rub" -- literally, and in the Bard's figurative speech, as well.

Grip, after all, is that elusive perfect compromise between too much friction and not enough. The tire's contact patch must adhere to the track surface so the driver can accelerate, brake and corner. The better it adheres, the more heat it generates. If it generates too much, the materials out of which the tire is constructed will fail. Not enough, and the traction will not be sufficient for the driver to maintain control.

Unless he slows down.

Which race drivers are loath to do.

I wrote in an earlier post about the difficulty of undoing technology or any other kind of advancement. This is yet another example of that univeral truth. Drivers' comments give away their human-nature tendency to want things both ways -- really grippy tires that enable them to go fast and maintain control of their cars and tires that are reliable and long-lasting, as well.

Goodyear's tires are an important part of the evolutionary process that has given stock car drivers the capability of going 193 mph at Charlotte. The process has also brought us to the spike in blowouts we've seen this year. The tires just haven't kept up with the cars and the tracks in this supposed-to-be-symbiotic relationship.

The ineffably capable Humpy Wheeler, one of the sport's pillars, has taken responsibility -- perhaps even more than he should have been expected to do -- for the problems. But in fairness to Humpy and to Lowe's Motor Speedway, it's not only his track where tire problems have become the dominant news subject of the weekend.

I'm not sure how much technology is transferred to Goodyear's passenger car tire business to benefit the consumer, but I'm satisfied that engineers learn things in NASCAR racing that pay residual benefits for highway drivers. Despite all the problems that have marred this season, I've not lost any confidence in the tire supplier.

But I sure hope we can get through upcoming races without more recurrences of such problems.