AVONDALE – Goodyear was trending on social media for all the wrong reasons Sunday during the NASCAR Cup Series Championship finale at Phoenix Raceway. Kyle Larson took home the title, becoming the 18th driver to win multiple Cup Series Championships.
However, NASCAR fans around the world were blaming Goodyear’s tires for deciding the final race of the 2025 season.
Though this tire setup has been used before, most recently at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in September, this is the first time the Racing Eagle tire has run at Phoenix Raceway. This tire uses a softer compound, which was supposed to allow for more grip and traction on Phoenix Raceway’s 1-mile tri-oval track.
In reality, the field of 38 cars experienced 12 blown tires. All four of the Championship 4 drivers dealt with tire issues, including two blowouts by Chase Briscoe, who kept clawing back to salvage an 18th-place finish.
But the most notable and consequential blowout occurred with four laps remaining when William Byron, who was in second place and trailing Denny Hamlin by three seconds, blew a tire, leading to a late caution that ultimately costing Hamlin the Cup Series Championship.
With the field going in for a pit stop due to the caution, Hamlin and his crew decided to change all four tires, while Larson and other teams only changed right-side tires.
When the leaders exited the pits, Larson came out in fifth position. Hamlin had dropped to 10th.
“Yeah, I felt something a little funny on that lap,” Byron said post-race. “(I) was trying to figure out if it was a tire. I guess we were coming to three laps to go. I was trying to figure out, ‘Left rear? Right rear?’
“About the time I hit the brakes into three, it laid down on the right side of the car and went straight. Yeah, I was hoping it would be a left rear so I could kind of get back.”
Anyone who was listening in on eventual champion Kyle Larson’s scanner during the race, heard constant communication between Larson and his crew chief, Cliff Daniels, about tire issues:
“Trying to be easier on the right rear, but it’s hard to do,” Larson radioed.
“Can’t lean, it’s going to die soon.”
“It just feels like I have a flat tire.”
“Rubber is caked on brake openings,” Daniels responded. “We’ll clean them on the next pit.”
“Everything just feels slimy and greasy,” Larson said.
“It’s about to die and I’m not even trying,” Larson added.
The question is, was Goodyear responsible for all the tire issues that occurred during Sunday’s race? Was the manufacturer really the culprit behind costing Hamlin his long-awaited, first-ever Cup Series title?
Ask the fans and viewers, the resounding answer is “yes!” Ask the drivers and teams, the answer is different.
“Well, I think (Goodyear) did a great job all season long,” Hamlin said. “It’s not their fault that we’re running the tires flat. I really applaud them and the tires that they’ve continued to bring to the racetrack and keep pushing the limits on softer, softer, to try to put it back in the drivers’ hands.”
The recommended minimum inflation for the Goodyear Racing Eagle tires is as follows: LF – 14 psi, RF – 30 psi, LR – 14 psi and RR – 26 psi. However, different tracks and different conditions require teams to make tough decisions on how to run their tires.
“It’s not the design of the tire,” Hamlin said. “We’re just running our tires super low because that’s where they perform the best. Everyone is testing the limits. A lot of people found it.”
It wasn’t just teams reaching for the forbidden fruit of performance by testing the limits of tire pressure. Larson’s tire blow wasn’t due to pushing the envelope, his crew chief said.
“What’s interesting to me is the run that we had a failed front tire, we had actually come back up on air,” Daniels said. “I wouldn’t put us in the category of pushing the limits of air. I was trying to be conservative and still had an issue.”
One factor was the heat. It reached 89 degrees in Avondale during the race, which means the track surface can reach anywhere between 120 and 140 degrees.
“Today was a really hot day,” Daniels said. “There was a lot of punishment of load and pace in the car and in the tires. I certainly don’t think in any way that is a miss on Goodyear’s part.
“I think we all knew what we were all working with coming in today. And it was hot. It was the perfect conditions set to really punish the tires, with the tires they brought, with what we had on track. That’s just kind of the way it was.”
Race winner Ryan Blaney had his own hypothesis: It wasn’t tire pressure or heat. It was the track design itself.
“I think here is such an unknown because you have that dogleg that puts a ton of shock load on the tire,” Blaney said. “There’s not a lot of data for that.”
The next time Goodyear’s tires will experience the NASCAR Cup Series at Phoenix Raceway will be in March 2026. A new partnership with Verizon was announced Sunday morning with Straight Talk as the primary sponsor of a 500-mile race in Avondale next season.
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