NASCAR Cup Series – Race No. 6 – 68 laps / 231.88 miles
Circuit of The Americas (3.41-mile road course) – Austin, Tex.
Fast Facts for March 26-27, 2022
Tire: Goodyear Eagle Road Course Radials
Set limits: Cup: 1 set for practice, 1 set for qualifying and 6 sets for the race
(5 race sets plus 1 set transferred from qualifying)
Tire Code: D-5112 (same on all four tire positions)
Tire Circumference: 2,276 mm (89.61 in.)
Minimum Recommended Inflation: Left Front — 20 psi; Right Front — 22 psi;
Left Rear — 17 psi; Right Rear — 17 psi
Storyline – COTA helps NASCAR hit for the cycle: The 2022 NASCAR season is off to a flying start, with this weekend’s race at Circuit of The Americas marking the end of a stretch where the Cup Series races on its widest range of tracks. This road course event comes on the heels of the short track Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, traditional superspeedway at Daytona, two-mile at Fontana, existing mile-and-a-half at Las Vegas, the one-mile at Phoenix and the freshly repaved hybrid speedway at Atlanta. These races will surely get teams along the early-season learning curve with the Next Gen car and 18-inch bead diameter tire. COTA is the first of six road courses on this year’s Cup schedule. Teams got a look at this package at a NASCAR organizational test on the Charlotte Roval this past October.
“It is really great how we’ve come out of the gate to start this season, running on such a wide variety of tracks before we even get out of March,” said Greg Stucker, Goodyear’s director of racing. “With everything that is new this season for Cup teams, these races, capped off by this weekend’s event at COTA, will accelerate the learning curve for teams. With this variety of tracks, teams will have a good notebook established and be able to build upon that as we get into the meat of the schedule.”
Notes – Cup teams get fits look at road course on 18-inch tire: Having moved to an 18-inch bead diameter tire for 2022, NASCAR Cup teams will run a different tire set-up than those in the Xfinity and Camping World Truck Series at COTA this week . . . on NASCAR road courses, teams run the same tire code on all four corners of the car . . . with the obvious construction changes vs. what Cup teams ran at this track last season, this tire set-up features the same tread compound as the one run at COTA in 2021 . . . this is the same tire Cup teams are scheduled to run at Sonoma and Road America in 2022 . . . with this 18-inch tire, and its lower profile sidewall, NASCAR Cup cars will not run inner liners in any of their tires in 2022.
Wet Weather Tires – New size and new tread pattern for Cup in ‘22: Goodyear will bring a completely redesigned wet weather radial tire to COTA for the NASCAR Cup cars . . . Cup teams will be allowed 1 set of wets for practice, 1 set for qualifying and up to 6 sets for the race . . . in addition to moving from a 15-inch to an 18-inch bead diameter tire, this wet weather tire has a new tread pattern, based on Goodyear’s Eagle Supercar 3 consumer tire . . . this tire was tested at Goodyear’s facility in San Angelo, Texas in 2021 . . . NASCAR Cup teams last ran a wet weather tire in competition at COTA last May . . . in addition to the obvious difference of a tread pattern versus Goodyear’s dry weather “slick” tires, the “Goodyear” and “Eagle” lettering on the sidewalls of the wet weather tires is white, not the standard yellow.
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Goodyear Racing PR