Daytona sets dates for 2011 NASCAR Cup testing
Preseason testing for 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Speedweeks is scheduled for Jan. 20, 21 and 22 with a rain date of Jan. 23 at Daytona International Speedway.
Despite NASCAR’s testing ban, which was announced at the season finale at Homestead in 2008, the track’s decision to pave the 2.5-mile track made testing a necessity. The repaving is expected to be completed by Jan. 1.
Teams have been told they will only be allowed to take one primary car, which is unlike testing in the past where organizations brought multiple cars.
Unless the paving process can be completed prior to Jan. 1, NASCAR’s exclusive tire supplier, Goodyear, will have to use the control tire it selected through data and pavement samples from Talladega Superspeedway. However, since Daytona is not as wide as Talladega and the transitions through the turns are different, it will be beneficial for the tire manufacturer to schedule a live surface test. Still, Goodyear needs at least a month to develop a tire and have it cure before the run can be used for competition.
“There’s no point in testing at all if we can’t (tire) test until January 1,” said Goodyear Product Manager Rick Heinrich. “We have a lot of repave experience, but we would love to test. We have a preliminary recommendation that we’ll proceed with at the test in January.
“But the manufacturing process would have to start now to have the tires ready (to test) by the middle of December. After that, it’s too late to find teams that are willing to test during the holidays.”
Daytona President Joie Chitwood offered the Jan. 1 date as a safe prediction of when the project would be completed for practical purposes. Chitwood must balance three racing series – Grand-Am, NASCAR and AMA Pro Racing -- all hoping to gain track time with the new surface.
Chitwood said the track “wants” tire testing and “the minute the track is ready, we’re going to have somebody out there running something.”
“Luckily for us, the weather has been unbelievably cooperative,” Chitwood said. “We’ve only lost a couple of days to bad weather. I watched them, this past week, finish off Turns 3 and 4 with the final layers of asphalt. I watched them destruct the Turns 1 and 2 asphalt and get it ready to do those. The superstretch and frontstretch are close to being done. Pit lane is yet to do; we are widening pit lane by 12 feet.
“When you look at where we are, and it’s October 9, it looks pretty darn good. It feels like we are farther along than we should be. Our plan is to be done by January 1; if there’s a chance to be done earlier, we’ll start tire testing early.
“What we need to do, when we think we are three weeks away from having the track available, we’ll let the tire companies know because that’s how long it’ll take them to mobilize. Not only do we have to test Goodyear tires for NASCAR, we also have to test sport cars, motorcycles, Hoosier tires for ARCA – we run a lot of stuff during the spring time. We have to get a lot of guys on track.”
The only other testing expected to occur in 2011 will be at Kentucky Motor Speedway on the Thursday before the track’s Sprint Cup debut on July 9.
