Denny Hamlin reacts to Goodyear option tires at Phoenix: '100% success'

NASCAR has continued to experiment with the Goodyear option tires on shorter tracks, and it appears the organization is starting to center in on best practices with the tire. The drivers are loving the new softer compound.

In fact, some are hailing it as a smashing success. With a caveat or two.

“It was a 100% success,” Denny Hamlin said of the option tires at Phoenix over the weekend. “I think that certainly I can’t think of a short track or a mile or less track that these tires couldn’t go and race at next week.”

Hamlin has been pushing for a softer option tire compound for a while. He’s not the only one who’s been banging on the table for that.

“I mean I certainly think that we’ve got a winner,” Hamlin said on his Actions Detrimental podcast. “And we talked about for the last three years, right, that me and Dale (Earnhardt) Jr. believed for the longest time that Goodyear unlocked, has the keys to NASCAR Cup Series racing. And I think it’s evident that we were right because we’ve got tire fall-off, we finally got them to put some soft tires on the car, and the results of the racing that we’ve seen speaks for itself.”

There have been some compelling finishes, to be sure. And what’s more than that, the new tires bring a lot of strategy to the forefront.

Now, not all of that strategy has been welcome. Some have argued the option tires allow drivers without some of the fastest cars to gamble with their timing on usage to potentially create an edge.

That’s less competitive and introduces more variability into the mix. Less predictability.

“We don’t want options. We don’t want multiple compounds,” Hamlin explained. “I think you start getting a little bit quirky when that happens. I think you just would have fantastic racing no matter what with just the straight ass option tire.”

In other words, rather than having, say, six sets of primaries and two sets of options, drivers would prefer having eight full sets of option tires. That allows for a more consistent competitive playing field while still taking advantage of everything the softer tire compound has to offer.

“That’s what we’re saying is just go ahead and this be our new short-track tire and it’s up to the drivers and the teams to manage it from this point on,” Hamlin said. “But there’s a production to this, right? I don’t know what their schedule is. Have they already made our New Hampshire tires, have they already made our Gateway tires? But if they haven’t they just need to copy and paste this everywhere we go.”