Just like drivers, crew chiefs and owners who want to practice to make sure a car is perfect before taking it to a race, tire manufacturers want to make sure they have the perfect tire as well.

USAR Pro Cup drivers Clay Rogers and Bobby Gill aided tire manufacturer BF Goodrich by turning laps Thursday morning at the Rockingham Speedway.

Rogers, the winner of last year’s USAR Pro Cup race at “The Rock” and Gill each drove around 20 laps in each test session before heading back to the pit area where BF Goodrich technicians checked the tires.

“We are doing a stagger test,” said Gary Blalock, a race tire development member with BF Goodrich. “We are checking the temperature and pressure on each tire. We are taking three temperature readings on each tire.”

Everyone who has tested, practiced or raced at the Rockingham Speedway knows the tracks reputation for being hard on tires. Blalock admitted it can be different to gauge how a tire will stand up during a race at “The Rock.”

“This is one of the fastest (tire) wearing tracks in the country,” Blalock said. “It is also one of the fastest on the USAR series.”

Even though both the drivers and the tire manufacturer were pleased with tire performance last year, BF Goodrich wants to make sure it doesn’t have problems like Goodyear had during a NASCAR race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

“We’ve never had a tire wear issue,” Blalock said. “Our only issues came at the new track in Iowa. The track is like a shrunken superspeedway and we had heat issues and that was four years ago. Each year we keep getting a little better there.”

Blalock, his technicians and the drivers used the information gathered from last year’s race as the building block for Thursday’s test.

“The cars started from where they were last year,” he said. “Then the crews start to tune the car from what they find out, like if the car is loose or tight going into or out of a turn.”

Even though the USAR Pro Cup race isn’t scheduled for “The Rock” until October and the track temperatures are expected to be wildly different, Blalock will take the information and make his recommendations for which tire to use.

“The temperature will probably be 20 or even 30 degrees cooler for the race, which will change the track conditions,” Blalock said. “Even though it’s 90 degrees today and the track has very little rubber on it because of all the rain, we will use all of our experience, interpret the information and determine what is the best tire to bring here in October.

“My personal goal is for the tires at the race to be trouble-free and problem-free.”