Historic Debut of Wet-Weather Tires Deemed ‘Success’ at Richmond Raceway

The rain persisted throughout Sunday (March 31) afternoon at Richmond Raceway.

Nevertheless, by just past the scheduled green-flag time, the weather had slacked off enough for NASCAR to make a historic call: wet-weather tires would be used for the first time on an oval in a points-paying Cup Series event.

With the sun setting behind a veil of patchy clouds, the sky a vibrant blue-orange and a fleeting shard of rainbow beyond the turn 2 grandstands, the 36-car field took the green flag despite a looming threat of more rain.

“I think if you look, we had a scheduled 7:12 p.m. green flag and we went green at 7:31 p.m. I believe, so [only a] 15-minute [delay], which is huge,” NASCAR Vice President of Competition Elton Sawyer said after the race. “We could have been sitting there another hour getting everything dry like we have in the past.”

That rain held off until after the race and Denny Hamlin‘s victory, when a few intermittent drops fell while Sawyer spoke to media. He considered the race, and what was essentially the first true test of the tires, a success.

“First of all, credit to Jim France,” Sawyer said. “This was his vision a couple of years ago. He tasked the R&D center and Goodyear to come up with a tire that we could run in the damp, and was a success.

“We were able to get the race started pretty much on time. The guys did a great job with the tire, Goodyear did a phenomenal job. We called the competition caution at lap 30, that was about where we needed to be. Looked like we might have been able to go another five or so laps, but the main thing is we were able to get the race started.”

The tires endured for the first 30 laps, after which a competition caution was called and noncompetitive pit stops were instituted due to the still-soaked pit road. Air Titans were deployed to try to help dry out the pit lane, but could only do so much. After the stops, the field was stopped in the turns to ensure the correct restart order was set.

NASCAR has seen wet-weather tires put to task before, but primarily on tracks with slower speeds and both left and right turns. Ovals had only been attempted with the tire on two occasions — last spring, with the Craftsman Truck Series at Martinsville, and last summer at North Wilkesboro Speedway, during the heat races. This was the first premier series points race in which they’d been put to the…