Tiring Controversy : New Radials Have Turned Indy into a Guessing Game

Is it is or is it ain’t the tires?

Will this race be plagued by something new?

In the world of high-performance tires these days, everything is radial chic. And so, for Sunday’s 71st Indianapolis 500, the 33 starting cars will be on radials. That’s a departure for this track, although radials have been used successfully elsewhere in racing--and on probably 50% of the passenger cars in the United States.

With change come problems, though, and there have been car-handling problems galore here during this month of practice and qualifying. Crashes by A.J. Foyt and Emerson Fittipaldi in Thursday’s normally placid Carburetion Day practice runs were the 22nd and 23rd such incidents, and most of those 23 have been attributed to cars suddenly skating off on their own, regardless of driver intent.

Indications are that the tires are a major factor.

But not the only factor.

Also widely cited are “unusual” track conditions--severe heat combined with excessive rubber build-up resulting in a slippery racing surface--and incorrect chassis set-ups.

Those problems, however, are familiar ones that seem only to be made worse by the new tires. In short, the marriage of radial tires and Indy cars has produced a stormy honeymoon.

Once the bride and groom get used to living with one another, things are likely to be just fine. In the meantime, though, there’s a race to be run here Sunday. And if everyone’s not real careful, racing’s biggest bash is likely to become just that, a big bash.

“My concentration level is going to have to be quite high,” former winner Rick Mears said. “I’m going to have to drive a little more conservatively.”

Said Johnny Rutherford, another former winner: “Radials present a different feel than the bias (ply) tires. It’s a different tire so you get a different feeling, a different set of parameters.

“Some of the guys just aren’t bending with the flow. If the car won’t go flat-footed (without the driver lifting his foot from the accelerator in the turns) around here comfortably like it would last year and the year before that, then you’d better not try to make it go around here flat-footed.”

And, said Tom Sneva, still another former winner and the new tires’ harshest critic: “The tires are different from what we’re used to running and they’re catching the drivers by surprise. They’re being affected by small changes in track conditions a lot more severely than what we’re used to. We’re in a lot of different set-ups from day to day.

“We have this big data log of information that you’ve gathered the last 10 years, saying, ‘Hey, this is what you can expect to see in these types of conditions,’ and that book is obsolete. Throw that book away and start writing a new one.”

That, no doubt, will be done eventually, but that still leaves race day.

“Unless the guys use their heads tremendously well, there could be some more crashes (Sunday), obviously,” Sneva said.

Both Rutherford and Sneva said that they would have been happier with choices between the old bias tires or the new radials.

Impossible, said Leo Mehl, director of worldwide racing for Goodyear, which builds and provides the tires used here.

“That was not an option,” Mehl said. “We started building this year’s tires in January. Most of the teams didn’t get their new cars until March or April, and some didn’t get them until just before the track opened.

“Offering both types would have resulted in mass confusion. You have to set up your chassis completely different with the radials than with the old tires. That would have created a real safety problem. You’ve got to go one way or the other.”

Mehl said that the radial is simply an all-around better tire for racing and pointed out that radials have been successfully introduced to Formula One and other types of road racing, as well as for Indy cars on shorter tracks. He pointed out, too, that the prototype of the tire being used here this month was on the Indy cars last year in the Pocono 500 at another superspeedway, the Pocono International Raceway.

“The cars are so sophisticated these days,” he said. “They’re much more sensitive than they ever were before. With these cars, you need radials for greater control. We just had to get the Indianapolis 500 into the ‘80s.

“There are adjustments to be made but it seems like some have adapted very much quicker than others--cars, mechanics and drivers.

“This is exactly what happened in Formula One. We had people there who wanted to go back to the old bias tire, too. But once everybody figured it out, there haven’t been any problems.”

Mehl maintains, in fact, that the new radials have already begun building an impressive safety record.

“There have been several incidents here where the radial belts kept the tire together,” he said. “Under those same conditions, the bias tire would have exploded.”

Mehl and Goodyear are so convinced of the future of radial racing tires that they are not telling what material is used for the the radial belts, lest competition move in with something similar.

“It’s not steel,” was all Mehl would say.

Still, the confidence level of the drivers in the new skins is hardly sky high, whichever way they choose to express it, and chances are that Sunday’s race will be significantly slower than lots of folks expected in March and April.

That’s not all bad in at least one driver’s view.

“As far as I’m concerned, it wouldn’t hurt to back up a little,” Mears said. “We don’t need to run 220 (m.p.h.). Around 200 is fine, but we don’t need 220.”