The Wide World of Dirt

So, me and my good buddy Dirt were discussing this being Kevin Harvick’s last year, and we got on the topic of throwback schemes to celebrate his illustrious career competing in NASCAR.

Naturally we got on the topic of Harvick’s NASCAR Winston West Championship car as that was his first real success at any level of NASCAR competition.

We talked a bit about how cool it would be if they threw back to that car for the All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro later this year.

After a bit of discussion (and a few emails sent off to Anheuser-Busch), Dirt told me that he recently picked up the diecast of that car, to which I told him of an “error” on the car in which the car in the box has Goodyear tires and the diescast itself is fitted with Hoosiers.

This of course piqued our collective interest to which we had to figure out which of the two was correct. What we were able to discover in our research was that while not matching with each other both were in fact correct. “How could this be?” You might be asking yourself, well allow me to explain.

So the 1999 Nascar Winston West Series took place across various tracks in the Western and Northwestern parts of the country from January 11th, 1998 to November 7th,1998 at the following race tracks:

• Tucson Speedway
• Las Vegas Speedway (x2)
• Phoenix Raceway (x2)
• Fontana (x2)
• Heartland Park Topeka
• Mesa Marin (x2)
• Altamont Motorsports Park
• Portland Speedway
• Pikes Peak International Raceway
• Evergreen Speedway
• Sonoma

The problem we immediately ran into is how little information there is about this series, which given the time period makes perfect sense. Digital cameras didn’t exist, and it wasn’t easy to upload anything easily 25 years ago.

However we were able to find two reference pictures that showed the car both with Goodyears and with Hoosiers.

Dirt identified the first picture as Fontana pretty quickly, and we agreed that the second picture was likely taken at Mesa Marin, but what does this actually tell us?

Well Dirt’s theory was that that when Goodyear became the exclusive tire supplier of NASCAR from 1995 onwards that they required the NASCAR West teams to run Goodyear Eagles at NASCAR-sanctioned tracks, such as Fontana, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Pikes Peak.

Meanwhile at the independent tracks, teams ran the tire of their choosing, possibly due to the Hoosiers being cheaper to run as Goodyear could basically charge whatever they wanted. They had the exclusive deal with NASCAR after all.

I concurred but decided to see if I could dig and find anything to support this theory.

I was able to find 3 of the 14 races on YouTube, first race being Tuscon. Almost immediately I saw Hoosier tires and remembered Tuscon Speedway was never owned by NASCAR. That’s a check in the plus column for the theory we have going.

From there I was able to find the second Fontana race. As hilarious as it was to watch these 650hp cars poking around this massive facility, I quickly spotted a car getting wheeled to the garage fitted with Goodyears, thus putting another check in the plus column.

After a bit more digging I was able to find a third and final race from that season, that being the race at Heartland Park Topeka, a 2.5 mile road course adjacent to an airport that still operates to this day.

Now, I must preface that I’m taking some liberty with this one cause this was clearly a very poor VCR recording that someone has kept and graciously uploaded. The quality is not great, but the fact that it exists in any capacity where it can be saved forever is great for the history of the sport.

That being said the best picture I was able to get of the tires is not very clear, but I believe there is enough there to point to them being Hoosiers. I will take a bit of liberty to put this into the plus column. Albeit with an asterisk.*

So, what can we conclude from what info we have? Well at the very least you could say that running Hoosiers at non-NASCAR tracks and Goodyears strictly at NASCAR tracks has some weight to it. To the point where I’m confident in saying that that was in fact the case.

We may never know for sure the reasons why unless we manage to talk to someone that was around the series then and ask if they’d even be inclined to give us the time of day.

Regardless it remains a curious footnote in the post-tire wars era of NASCAR competition that feels very similar to how ARCA runs General Tires today. And to think, we learned all this thanks to an “error” on a Lionel diecast.

***Editor’s note: Hello, it is I, Dirt. I come from the editing desk to tell you that I have actually learned of what really caused this snafu in the first place.

In an article published by Motortrend in 2000, then-Winston West director Mike Verlatti said it was up to the teams to run Goodyear, Hoosier, or even both during a given weekend.

I have no way of knowing what Kevin and Spears were up to with their rubber compound plan for 1998, so the trail kinda ends here.

It was all an arbitrary decision by each team every single week.***