Goodyear tire test at Michigan cut short by rain

With showers in the morning, teams got a late start on the exercise running just 50 to 60 laps before the session was called just after 2 p.m. EST.

Austin Dillon, Martin Truex Jr. and Aric Almirola took part in the test using the Las Vegas tire which will return with the teams for the FireKeepers Casino 400 on June 12.

“I think we ran just over 50 laps,” crew chief Cole Pearn told motorsport.com. “No issues, tires were fine.”
The teams were also expected to test a few of the modifications that NASCAR has mandated for the Sprint Cup cars this weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway. According to the sanctioning body, the alterations include welded truck trailing arms to reduce dynamic rear skew and updated brake cooling rules to remove downforce generating electric fans. Although NASCAR is changing the initial static rear toe by setting it to zero degrees in an effort to reduce sideforce produced by rear skew, the rule is only being used for All-Star weekend.

Dillon was certain how quick his single lap speeds were. He estimated his laps at over 200 miles per hour and described the sensation as “fast”.

“We’re going through packages right now — aero-wise — because we’re working on a different for Michigan,” Dillon said. “We went through that. I thought it was different than the package last year (high drag in August) and is different than this year’s package. It went smooth. We didn’t get the reading we thought we were going get as far as the speed and difference. But any time you get on a track and get working I feel like it helps you when you’re coming to a track in a couple of weeks.

“It’s the lower (downforce) package. We thought it would slow down a lot. It really didn’t slow down that much. The balance is fairly similar. We’re a little bit freer through the corner — and we expected that. So we’ll keep working on that.”