Jeff Gordon On Las Vegas Race
Mar 12, 2007
On track changing today at all or get any better:
“My car was pretty good in one and two. I would get down there and get in to the banking. For some reason the banking in one and two would hold me better than three and four. Three and four I felt like I was on ice from lap one to the last lap. The last lap I made running there behind Jimmie, I was just trying not to spin out coming off the corner. That is how it was for me all day. I been hearing or somebody said that Goodyear might bring a harder left side tire to Charlotte and I am doing their tire test at Darlington this week, I am going to have a long talk with those guys or take them to dinner or something. I am not totally putting them at fault here, we are all in this thing together. But we have to find a solution together as well. There is no reason for us to show up at race tracks and go through a white knuckle experience throughout a whole weekend like we were this weekend. They have too smart of people, they have been doing this too long and we have smart people and NASCAR has been doing this too long that we have got to figure out how not to bring tires like this to the race track. And again, I am not blaming them 100% because we fed the camber to it, we have lowered the air pressure on the tires and we’ve blown the tires out. We have made these cars go faster with downforce. We have got to be able to figure something that the teams can contribute, Goodyear can contribute, NASCAR, the race tracks, to make sure we don’t come back like this. “
On race being similar to Charlotte a couple of years ago:
“Yes, I think so. The only thing is that this track has variable banking so I think we will definitely have a couple of grooves but it is going to be tough to pass because the tire is so, so hard. This isn’t something that any of us want. Some way we have to figure out as a collective group because we are all trying to build our cars to go faster. You have a track that wanted to change up its banking and its surface and that is great but, they have created so much grip that now the tire can’t handle it. So Goodyear it has to go in and change the tire, then NASCAR has to make a move on the fuel cell and all that. It is not what any of us want, we all want a track that wears out and is old and doesn’t have a lot of grip so Goodyear can build the right tire and we can go out there and race. It is something you wish you could get around but it is nobody’s fault, we are all in this together. You kind of a wish there was another way around it, but it just doesn’t seem like there is right now.
