Teams searching for 'how low can you go?' after Kansas tire issues
A rash of flat tires headlined NASCAR Cup Series practice Saturday at Kansas Speedway as teams found the limit of low air pressure. Shane (...)
A rash of flat tires headlined NASCAR Cup Series practice Saturday at Kansas Speedway as teams found the limit of low air pressure.
Shane van Gisbergen, Ty Gibbs, Brad Keselowski and Chase Briscoe experienced left-side tires going down. The first three all happened within laps of each other when practice for the first group of drivers began. Briscoe was in the second group of drivers when his failure occurred, but he was the only one in the group who had one.
Keselowski said he had “a little bit” of a warning before the tire went down.
“I was going through 3 and 4, and it felt a little soft. Thankfully it did give me a warning, so I didn’t spin out and crash,” the RFK Racing driver said. “We’re just all pushing the cars to the limit. I didn’t think we were going to be that close, but we’ll work on it and get it better for Sunday.”
Goodyear brought a different left rear tire than Cup Series teams ran at Kansas last year, but the combination of left and right-side tires has been run at four other tracks this season — Las Vegas, Homestead, Darlington, and Texas. The right-side tires are the same as what was run in both Kansas races last year.
It was recommended to Cup Series teams that they run 22 psi in the left rear tires.
Zane Smith, meanwhile, had a right-side tire go down, which resulted in him hitting the wall off Turn 4. Smith was in the second group of drivers in practice.
“We saw the issues in the first group, and then I thought we were safe on the pressures we were running, and then, out of nowhere, blew a right rear in the middle of 3 and 4, and it unfortunately tagged the fence,” Smith said. “Just a spot bad for that to happen. Before that happened, though, an unbelievably fast Horizon Hobby Ford. I feel really good about our car; I felt our long run pace was as strong as anybody’s.
“Hopefully we get it back to the way it was … everyone at FRM is going to be working hard to get this thing back right, but all the confidence in the world in them.”
