IRL, INDY500: Goodyear Fast Facts for the Indianapolis 500
14 May 1999
INDIANAPOLIS MOTOR SPEEDWAY 2.5-MILE OVALINDIANAPOLIS, IND., MAY 30, 1999
NUMBER OF TIRES REQUIRED: PRIMARY FRONT PRIMARY REAR1,200 1,600
OPTIONAL FRONT OPTIONAL REAR
800 600
RECOMMENDED COLD PRESSURE: Left front and rear 27 psi
Right front and rear 35 psi
DESCRIPTION: Goodyear Eagle IRL Racing Radial
Front 25.5 x 10.0-15 inch Rear 27.0 x 14.0-15 inch
ESTIMATED PIT STOPS: Approximately every 25 laps, based on fuel capacity.
Race length is 500 miles/200 laps.
NOTES AND QUOTES:
* Goodyear returns to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway as the defending
champion of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing. In 1998, Eddie Cheever Jr.
led a 1-2-3-4-5-6 Goodyear sweep in winning the biggest race of his
stellar career. Goodyear has won 26 of the past 31 Indianapolis 500s,
dating back to A.J. Foyts third Indy 500 win in 1967.
* Goodyears first win at the Brickyard came in 1919, when Howdy Wilcox drove a Speedway-owned Peugeot to victory in the first postwar 500-mile race.
* Goodyear opened the 1999 Pep Boys Indy Racing League on a winning note as Eddie Cheever Jr. led a Goodyear 1-2-3-4 finish at Walt Disney World Speedway in Orlando, Fla., in January. In March, Scott Goodyear claimed his first IRL victory, winning at Phoenix International Raceway, also on Goodyear Eagle Radials. In both races, Goodyear-equipped teams led the most laps, set the fastest race lap and carried the majority of the top-10 finishers.
* Goodyear-equipped drivers hold the top six positions in the Pep Boys Indy Racing League standings after the first two races. Scott Goodyear leads the championship with 93 points, followed by Jeff Ward (75), Cheever Jr. (63), Orlando polesitter Scott Sharp (61), Mark Dismore (58) and Billy Boat (54).
* Goodyear conducted four major tests at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to develop and refine the tire choices for this months competition.
Testing started with a two-day session in September 1998 and continued in mid-October. Goodyear resumed testing in mid-March and the engineers made the final choices following the April 10-12 open test.
Indianapolis is one of the most challenging circuits for which Goodyear develops tires, says Paul Lauritzen, Goodyears operations manager for the IRL. At every other track the one-mile ovals, the high-banked speedways Goodyear gathers information from similar tracks that aids in the development of the race tire. Indianapolis is unique in that it is the only 2.5-mile superspeedway we visit. Therefore, the testing we do at Indianapolis prior to the month of May is crucial to our tire selection process.
* Indianapolis provides the Goodyear engineers with some challenges faced nowhere else on the IRL circuit. The low banking (9 degrees in the corners) requires more mechanical grip from the tire than at other speedways, including the high-banked tracks seen later this year at Texas, Atlanta and Dover. Also, a fast speed at Indianapolis is highly dependent on the weather.
Variable winds and changing track temperatures throughout the day can either help or hurt a cars performance during a run.
* The Indianapolis 500 is widely regarded as one of the worlds most renowned motorsports events, says Stu Grant, Goodyears general manager of racing worldwide. The race attracts the largest single-day attendance of any sporting event and it commands a worldwide television and radio audience.
Even non-racing fans will pay attention to the Indy 500 due to the history and prestige of the race. Because of that, the Indianapolis 500 is very important to Goodyear, both as a showcase for our technology and as an important tool in our sales and marketing effort.
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