NSCS: NASCAR Warns Against Tampering Tires; Drivers React on Speculation

Friday morning at Martinsville Speedway, NASCAR got the Sprint Cup Series crew cheifs together for a meeting, and reminded them of the primary taboos of racing – don’t alter the engines in a manner outside the rule book, don’t do anything to alter the fuel provided by Sunoco, and don’t make any unapproved alterations or treatments to the tires provided by Goodyear.

The last warning has been the center of attention lately as over the past two weeks, NASCAR has done an “audit” of the tires. At Phoenix International Speedway, they took tires from race winner Kevin Harvick and Joey Logano, no issues were found with those tires. Last weekend at Auto Club Speedway, they took tires from Brad Keselowski, Harvick, Kurt Busch, Ryan Newman and Paul Menard – the top-five finishers. Those tires have since been sent to an “independent laboratory” for additional inspection and evaluation.

This is something that NASCAR feels teams should take seriously as it could result in a P5 penalty, which could result in 50-point penalties, $75,000-$125,00 fines, and a suspension of six weeks.

Newman says that he has no idea of whether his tires have been forwarded or not, but says he knows it’s something “they’ve been doing that for the last little bit”. While some are worried, Newman feels that “it’s just a matter of them doing their job” in keeping the sport at a level playing field.

While Newman isn’t worried, Denny Hamlin feels that there is cause for concern as “NASCAR sat down all the crew chiefs last year in Phoenix and told them to stop doing it”. In his perspective, he feels they saw something and are now concerned.

“If it’s out there and they know about it, you should be gone forever,” Hamlin added. “That’s a major, major thing and this isn’t like the old rodeo days of being able to go out there and run a big motor or soak the tires – this is a professional sport and people alter tires — that’s a big, big deal. Definitely no room for it in the sport, that’s for sure. Hope they clamp down on that if they do find it and if they find it multiple times with somebody, they should have a permanent vacation somewhere.”

Hamlin went on to say that rumors have been going o for years, and you “can only say something about you so much before it’s actually reality and it’s reality”. He also added that he believes NASCAR is tying to find out “whether it’s a natural leak or a drill-induced leak”.

“hey’ll figure out a way and whether it be somebody else looking at the tires to try to figure it out, they’ll find it and when they do the person – when they feel NASCAR getting hot on them they’re going to stop doing it,” Hamlin continued. “That’s maybe when you see some performance differences, you never know. We don’t know what kind of performance difference it can do because we haven’t done it.”

Jeff Gordon also recognized that the rumors have always been there, and he was the face of those rumors 17 years ago when he was dominating during the 1998 season.

“I can tell you that we weren’t ever doing anything like that in 1998,” he stated. “I know that people were speculating what we were doing. Or if we were doing it, Ray (Evernham) never told me. After all these years, I think I would have known about that. I’ve heard a lot of things with valve caps and poking holes in tires for years. But I’ve never seen it done. I’ve never had proof that it was done.”

Gordon is among those interested, though, as he looks forward to what information comes about and whether they can find a way to stop something if it’s going on as when it gets to this much conversation, it tells him “that it’s being done”, just not clear yet on how it’s done. Gordon also added that it would make sense for NASCAR to just go to bleeder valves, as well.

“I think a lot of us have speculated for years about different ways to bleed air from tires. I’ve been saying for years – and probably in here – that we need bleeder valves,” he said. “We just do. I came from sprint cars where they’re built into the wheel. You set them. They may not be advanced enough for what we need in a Cup car and Cup tire, but it just makes sense. It’s crazy what we do with air pressures. These big heavy cars build the air pressures up so much that we’re always trying to start them real low, which causes issues for Goodyear and the teams. Then they just increase, increase, increase. So it makes sense to me that we should have bleeder valves.”