Quote Originally Posted by RichardP View Post
I'm clearly keen on changing the tire situation but that is a very deceptive characterization of the data. In addition to the weather and track condition variables, Josh and I made many changes to the suspension during the weekend that made him much more competitive. A better comparison for tire degradation would be Michael and Kevin. In the championship race, both of them had best laps two tenths of a second off of their Saturday qualifying times. Again, we have multiple variables like temperature and the difference between a short qual session and a long race. After the Sunday morning rain storm, Tulsa weather history shows that it was about 5 degrees cooler for the race. What's the real time difference for the tires after corrections? Don't know. Would the outcome of the race been different without fresh tires? Hard to say. I know Josh doesn't regret putting on a fresh set for the championship race. Clearly, tires had no effect on the outcome of the AI race. For the brutally tight CMC race, there is some possibility that fresh tires were good for about 6"...


Richard P.
Cody thinks that's clearly a good 12"!!!

Of course I'm making a gross characterization of the data I'm just glad someone picked up on it. When I read the writeup it didn't sound like there were any changes made between R2 and the final other than new tires is the reason for the comment.

So we can speculate on what we don't know or I can state facts that Josh was .848 quicker in the champ race with new tires than any other lap he ran on Saturday with no changes mentioned. (and Sook started Saturday with a set that had one heat cycle on them from Cota if I understood correctly?

Conversely, Michael and Kevin who you brought up were both slower on Sunday. Also slower on Sunday was: Jander, Mozader, Martin, Records, Patel, Leinart, Sanchez, Fernandez.