IndyCar drivers ponder Long Beach unknowns over ‘cliffy’ tires

Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach polesitter Kyle Kirkwood had a blunt assessment of the softer tire compound he and the other IndyCar Series drivers are required to use at least once today during the 90-lap contest.

“The green tires suck. They are awful. You do not want to race on them,” the 2023 Long Beach winner told RACER after the morning warmup session. “That's what we learned. And I'm pretty sure everybody thinks the same. I think (Team Penske's) Will Power looked the best on them, if I had to guess; he was around me. But if I had to guess, also, he probably was on new tires because he only did the first round of qualifying. So I think that they probably threw new tires at him and it looked OK for him.”

The alternate compound featuring green sidewalls didn’t last long at the opening street race in St. Petersburg and the Andretti Global driver says to expect the same short lifespan at Long Beach. The rapid degradation and loss of performance from Firestone’s street course alternates come at the request of IndyCar. In that regard, the series’ official tire partner is delivering exactly what its client asked for, but it’s been hard to find drivers who love the expedited absence of grip.

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Juncos Hollinger Racing’s Conor Daly wasn’t as frustrated as Kirkwood after the warmup, but did see some drivers whose alternate tires were struggling around the 1.9-mile circuit.

“I didn't think the greens were bad at the beginning, but we wanted to try both tires,” Daly said of running both alternates and the longer-lasting primary compound. “But the cars that I came across at the end of the session, it looked like they were on motorbike tires because they were chunking so bad. So that's just me, just seeing some front deg, but I think you're gonna see some deg on the greens.

"It's similar to St Pete. I don't know if people are gonna be able to make them last enough to do a two-stop race. If they do that, that'd be wild, but someone's gonna try, I'm sure.

“It does seem to be a bit ‘cliffy’ on the greens. But the primaries are OK. I think there's a lot of deg in general. So that's good.”

Kirkwood concurred.

“It's gonna be a St. Pete over again,” he added.

Asked if the smart race strategy play would be to do like the top finishers at St. Petersburg and run the alternates to open the race, meet the two-lap requirement, and then spend the rest of the afternoon on primaries, Kirkwood wondered if starting on primaries and saving the alternates for later in the contest might be the way to go.

“I think you can definitely get away with it more here than St. Pete, so that you're likely to see maybe more people try that take their medicine at the end, when the tracks got a little bit more grip on it, because it's place of track position more so than any other street,” he said.

Shortly after the interview, Kirkwood’s team chose the opposite, along with 21 of the other 27 entries, and will start from pole on alternates. The top 11 qualifiers have chosen alternates, which means their "medicine" will be taken from the outset.

Daly, who predicted the reversal, is also starting on alternates. Three stops are expected, and possibly four for those who have significant tire-life struggles.

“Every time we think people are gonna do something, it's been wrong,” he said. “So that actually makes it interesting.”