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Champion Service and Hunter Technology Keep NASCAR Rolling Smooth |
Above: Champion co-founders Kevin Mahl, Jamie Rolewicz and Todd Carpenter review the newest Hunter GSP9700 features with product manager Dave Scribner at Hunter’s St. Louis Research & Training Center.
Above: Champion technicians use Hunter TC3500 Tire Changers to match-mount all tire and wheel assemblies prepared at their North Carolina facility. |
Champion Tire & Wheel, Inc. was founded by three former Goodyear engineers to provide precision wheel and tire assemblies to NASCAR racing teams for testing and qualifying. Today, with a staff of 50 and a fleet of 15 tractor trailers, the company maintains the racing wheels for all NASCAR Nextel Cup, Busch and Craftsman Truck Series races. At Champion’s Cornelius, North Carolina headquarters facility, the company uses Hunter tire changers and the GSP9700 Road Force Measurement® System exclusively to provide its services. Virtually every wheel in these NASCAR events is measured and maintained by Champion technicians using Hunter equipment. Champion then delivers the wheels to the respective teams on race day where they are match-mounted with Goodyear racing tires using the wheel data provided by Champion and the tires’ force variation data provided by Goodyear. |
Below: The wheel assemblies are then remeasured for excessive road force variation and balanced using eight GSP9700s.
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Above: Daily output can reach 1200 match-mounted tire and wheel assemblies, or more than 100,000 per season. These wheel assemblies will be used for testing. Wheels used in races are assembled at the track on the day of the event.
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Left: Champion archives and tracks data on every wheel throughout its life. The data is quickly accessed using a bar code scanner.
Below: Wheels are maintained, stored and deliverd to the track on race day by Champion. Nextel Cup teams may request 60 to 70 tire and wheel assemblies per race. |
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