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Tires more than mere transportation

NASCAR Know-How CLICK THE IMAGE TO LAUNCH CLIP How tires are used Start (2.3M .mov) Archives • Click here for past editions of Rusty Wallace's NASCAR Know-How

Tires -- they're black, they're round, and they turn in circles. So what's the big deal, right?

If nothing else there's one thing you've got to remember about racing tires. The only contact that a car has with the racing surface are the tires. If something goes wrong, then it all goes haywire.

Goodyear makes today's NASCAR tires, all of which are steel belted radials. Teams are allocated three sets until second-round qualifying is finished. Then each team gets the amount of tires that NASCAR allows for each race. That's usually around eight sets, depending upon the amount of pit stops at a given track.

Teams fill the tires themselves with nitrogen because nitrogen expands. That way, air pressure can be used as an adjusting tool.

One last thing about tires -- they're expensive. About $1,500 a set or just under $400 per tire. But when you consider that's all that's between me and the track, you can't put a price on safety.