Anybody who might be tire’d of the talk of the town on the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour in 2026 should brace for more as the season progresses.
And that’s a good thing.
The introduction of American Racer as the Tour’s official tire supplier this season has brought a mixed bag of feedback through six of the 16 scheduled races. Some teams have thrived on the tires while others have expressed frustration. Jon McKennedy, the 2022 series champion and a two-time race winner this year, put it simply: “Some guys like them, and some guys don’t.”
By Tadd Haislop, NASCAR.com
This is why NASCAR and American Racer have been and will continue to be so focused on the tires in 2026. These steps were anticipated after a preseason tire test at Florida’s New Smyrna Speedway. Despite agreement between the series and race teams that American Racer’s product would be ideal for the Tour, all parties understood the introduction of a new tire would bring a relatively unknown variable.
“We all realized this would be a work in progress,” Modified Tour director Gary Putnam said.
Added Patrick Emerling, a Modified Tour regular who competes part-time in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series: “Everybody knows, when you introduce a new tire, there’s always going to be bugs that are going to be worked out. As a team, the series and the tire manufacturer, we’re all in it together. Everybody wants a good product on the race track. I think it’s going to be figured out during the season.”
Scott Junod, the Director of Racing at American Racer, has seen it all through 41 years in the business, 28 at Goodyear and 13 at his current post. So when Modified Tour teams during and after the April 12 Icebreaker 150 at Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park expressed growing concerns over the sizing consistency of the tires, he knew how to respond.
The crux of the feedback: Sizing inconsistencies in the tires were impacting stagger, or the difference in circumference between the lefts and rights.
“Anytime you’re dealing with a bias ply tire, and you have guys who are relying on it and how it behaves with a very sophisticated suspension package that these cars have, then the tire becomes a link in that chain,” Junod said. “It’s ideal if it’s exactly where you think it is. But bias ply tires don’t always behave exactly as you hope they might.
“For example, the right side target circumference is 84 inches. In reality, there’s a bell curve that forms around 84 inches, and you can get a tire anywhere between 85 and 83 inches out of that same build. Because it’s a bias ply tire, and there’s that much variation in them inherently.
“We made a spec change in how we handle the tire both pre- and post-cure to make that less variable in size after the tire is on the track and heats up. By the time we got to Seekonk, we had already implemented the change. We got feedback that there was a pretty dramatic improvement in that.”
While teams expressed optimism after that Seekonk race on May 16, there was still work to be done ahead of the next event, at New York’s Riverhead Raceway on May 30. Putnam said teams were concerned they wouldn’t have enough stagger available for Riverhead, a quarter-mile bullring.
So American Racer implemented a couple tweaks: a nylon angle change to further control the tire’s growth, and a smaller tire size, as well.
Putnam said the changes were well received at Riverhead. He also cited the fact that a handful of Riverhead regulars, drivers who don’t typically compete on the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour and had never raced on these tires, ran competitively that day and night.
McKennedy didn’t win that race; Riverhead regular Mark Stewart did. But McKennedy won the aforementioned Seekonk race and the June 6 event at Oxford Plains Speedway in Maine.
“I felt like the last race or two, from what I could hear throughout the pits and my experience, it seems like it has been much better,” McKennedy said after the Oxford Plains race. “Again, it’s a brand new deal. We’re only six races in, so I think with a little bit of time, it can only get better.
“I think it has made it more of a level playing field for the simple fact that everyone entered this year with an unknown. No one really had any notes. All the notes everyone had from the previous years at these tracks you can’t use anymore, because these tires are so much different. It kind of puts it more in a window of who can adapt to the tire quicker and who can figure it out.
“At the end of the day, I think that puts the driver a little more at hand.”
Emerling in his assessment of the tires also noted the dynamic that is a schedule with so many unique tracks. He says “the perfect tire at every race track” is a tough mark to hit, noting that the season-opener at New Smyrna was smooth, but mixed feedback arrived with the March 28 race at Martinsville Speedway and beyond.
That’s why more modifications are on the horizon. Putnam visited American Racer’s factory in Indiana, Pennsylvania after the Oxford Plains race and left impressed by how “detail-oriented” they were in each process of the tire building. They agreed on their next move.
The Tour after the Riverhead race tested a softer right-side compound that did show more wear but not enough of a “needle mover” for the drivers in terms of feel. So American Racer instead will implement another nylon angle change for the rights, which should continue to address the sizing consistency. Putnam says that will be ready for the race at Claremont Motorsports Park on July 10. American Racer will also reduce the size of some of the rights so teams can have a better selection from which to choose.
Additionally, Putnam says, NASCAR and American Racer will look at another softer compound on the right side. They’re eyeing the August races for those, hopefully after the sizing factor has stabilized.
Finally, by the end of the year, American Racer will have a completely new design for NASCAR to test.
Junod is happy to work with the teams and the series through the feedback – albeit, mixed feedback – in an effort to provide ideal products. He did caution, though, the fact that change can involve concession.
“We’ve had zero product-related failures,” Junod said. “That’s an important measurable. So if we’re going to make any product change, we have to keep that in mind. Zero is that target. We don’t want to upset that calculus going forward. There’s no such thing as a race tire that doesn’t involve some compromise. If I want the tire to have more grip, OK, then chances are I have to deal with the possibility of the rubber heating up and blistering. I have to worry about it giving up faster. There’s all sorts of things.
“The size is an ongoing fight. It changes with the weather; I know it sounds kind of crazy. But the humidity and the temperature and the things that go on inside a factory affects some of that stuff. We’re trying to make sure we’re doing everything we can here that the tire is stable, has been handled properly, before we measure it. And then our measuring equipment is dead on. We continue to work on those things. We’ve remeasured everything we’ve had to make sure it’s stable and accurate. We’re trying to respond to those issues people have brought up.”
Emerling, who plays a massive role in USNEPower Motorsports on top of driving the race car, isn’t running as well this year as he did in 2025, when he won a pair of races. He said he’s not entirely sure to what extent his setups as they relate to the tires are to blame for that performance. (Which is relative; he’s fourth in the championship standings, just 12 points off the lead.)
What Emerling is sure about, though, is the cost savings that have come with the introduction of American Racer, part of the reason the Tour made the change for 2026 in the first place.
“It helps,” Emerling said. “NASCAR putting in the effort to save. Even on top of the savings on the tire, they did change their rules a little. Not every race is a pit stop race, and stuff like that. That adds up to a season and definitely helps.”
Putnam echoed the sentiment: “Your mid-level teams, it’s definitely a reason why some of them are doing it. (Some teams) probably wouldn’t be able to compete without that.”
Putnam is uniquely experienced with this type of change; he worked at Trackhouse Racing when NASCAR ushered in the Next Gen car for the Cup Series. He compared the current climate on the Modified Tour to the challenges Cup teams encountered in 2022, when simple parts weren’t readily available, and multiple redesigns took place over the span of a full year.
The difference, of course, is the fact that many Modified Tour team members address their cars on a part-time basis as opposed to the full-time operation of a Cup team.
“So when you introduce something like this that requires extra effort,” Putnam said, “not everybody’s going to be up to doing it.”
So NASCAR and American Racer will keep working to address concerns that have been and will continue to be raised.
Unlike those featured in a certain soccer tournament taking place over the summer, this goal is a moving target, but one upon which they’ll keep shooting.