Goodyear Eagle Dirt Tires – NASCAR Gets Dirty

By: America's Tire

Whether you’re a born-and-bred fan or you’re new to NASCAR, one of our favorite motorsports, you probably noticed that the 2021 Bristol Food City race was a little different this year.

For the first time in over fifty years, NASCAR got dirty at the race track in Bristol. If you aren’t in the know, there hasn’t been a dirt track race at the Cup level in more than half a century, and that’s a pretty big deal.

Normally a ½ mile paved oval, it takes quite a bit of work to turn the Bristol track into a sandbox for drivers to play in. Dump trucks packed with GPS trackers moved figurative heaven and literal earth to dirty up the track before the race. After hauling 2,300 truckloads of dirt onto the “Holy Grail” of short tracks, these trucks used the GPS devices to create the mathematically-precise angles required for high-speed left turns. The end result: a dirt version of the left-leaning bank you normally find on paved tracks.

And all that dirt means the drivers had to do a lot of planning and prepping to take on Bristol. One of the biggest ways to prep for dirt? Getting the right tires.

NASCAR TIRES

Before we dive into the details about dirt track tires, let’s break down the normal NASCAR tires you see on the pavement.

First things first: those NASCAR tires are all Goodyear Eagle racing slicks.

(Side note: you don’t have to be a pro to get legendary Goodyear Eagle performance!)

Secondly, NASCAR tires are pretty high tech. Sure, they look black and round like most tires, right? But those Goodyear Eagle tires are packing some serious advancements in tire technology, including an RFID chip, which tracks the tires across races, collecting usage and performance data for R&D purposes.

Obviously, one of the other things you’ll notice about these bad boys is that they’re completely slick. That maximizes road contact, giving drivers as much control as possible (and that’s important, because those tires undergo serious G-force when cornering at speed).

One of the other differences between NASCAR tires and most other tires, is the staggered design both for air pressure and tires. You may have heard of tires staggered front to rear, but in NASCAR, they run a staggered fitment from right to left, including larger tires and increased air pressure on the right side.

Why? Because those banked left turns drop a ton of force on the right side of the vehicle. According to Goodyear, the right front tire has to support approximately 4,000 pounds of load when hitting those left turns!

To put even more pressure on those tires, at 200mph, the contact patch of the tire is about the size of a sheet of notebook paper. That makes having the right set of tires pretty darn important.

The tires are such a critical part of a NASCAR’s performance that a specialist is charged with matching them in sets in direct accordance with a team’s racing strategy.

GOODYEAR’S DIRT NASCAR TIRES

Now that you know more than you ever thought you would about NASCAR racing slicks, what does that mean for the dirt track at Bristol?

If your first thought is that the tires have got to be different, you’re absolutely right. While racing slicks provide maxed out grip on pavement, they have a hard time digging into the dirt and powering those NASCAR vehicles forward.

That’s why the cars were all decked out in Goodyear’s Eagle Dirt tires. From the first glance, you’ll see that these tires aren’t slick at all. With their specialized block design, they look a little more like an ATV or UTV racing tire.

With a dirt-focused tread pattern, the Eagle Dirt track tire features an aggressive squared block pattern with self-cleaning grooves. They’ve also got reinforced shoulders. With their tightly packed blocks and strong shoulders, these tires ensure lightning quick steering response on the looser surface of the dirt track, while also providing the necessary grip for NASCAR drivers to reach and maintain max speeds as fast as possible.

Because the track is designed with a sharp downward bank, the tires will still be run in a staggered setup, with even shorter tires than normal on the left side. And that also means staggered air pressure too. Because the tires need flexibility to bite into the dirt, Goodyear recommends significantly lower air pressure on the right side of the vehicle, giving the drivers as much control as possible in the dirt.

NASCAR TIRE CONSTRUCTION – WHY IT MATTERS

Another thing of note with the Goodyear Eagle Dirt tires? They mark a surprising return to the bias ply construction of yore. Not seen since Goodyear transitioned to radial tires in 1989, there’s a very good reason Goodyear went with a bias ply build.

Tire construction plays a really big role in how tires perform on the track, and that includes addressing differences between dirt and paved surfaces!

While radial tires are stiffer and allow for more responsive handling on pavement, they tend to be less forgiving on dirt. Bias ply tires on the other hand will mould and conform to obstacles and irregularities in the dirt, giving drivers more grip, so they can stay in control on the dirt track.

Do you want unparalleled control off-road? You don’t have to be a racer to get Goodyear’s off-road grit.

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Schedule an appointment at your nearest store and we’ll get you taken care of.