By T.J. Buffenbarger
(January 15, 2026) — When RaceSaver president and Eagle Raceway owner Roger Hadan was getting feedback from his race teams for ideas to improve the experience with the grassroots level sprint car division, one consistent source of frustration for teams was the cost of consumables for a race night, and in particular tires.
Instead of just looking for another company to provide an alternate tire, Hadan took on the task a year ago of having a tire produced overseas specifically for the RaceSaver series.
What transpired next is one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken by a grassroots racing series for a potential cost saving solution.
“It’s been a year in the works, it takes a long time to try to turn the world around,” Hadan said about the process of sourcing their own product for racers to use.
Over the past year all the necessary things have been put into place on the back end. About two months ago final molds were created so testing could take place on the final product.
The product that RaceSaver produced is not just a copy and paste of the existing product. Hadan explained that the compound, tread pattern, and other aspects of the tire and unique to the RaceSaver product for the spec right rear, three left rear options, and front tires.
This fall extensive testing took place once the molds were built including a session with former IMCA RaceSaver champion Tyler Drueke, who ran laps with his 410-sprint car engine that has significantly more power than a RaceSaver engine to help stress test the product, which Hadan indicated passed with flying colors.
Drueke’s first reaction was surprise about the project when RaceSaver inquired about his services.
My first reaction was it was that they did a really good job of keeping it quiet because I hadn’t even heard about it,” said Drueke. It was not anything that anybody had talked about, so it very much was a surprise. I was just honored when they asked me to do it because it’s always fun to be part of something new”
After the test with the tire that led to the finished, Drueke felt the tire performed well during its stress test.
“The tire wore evenly left to right, and the car drove balanced, and ultimately, I put like 70 laps in the daytime surface on this car before it got wore all the way down. I thought that was impressive and it just very gradually, even worse, all the way across. It looked good.”
For Drueke, who fields his own team doing this as a hobby, the prospect of having this new tire isn’t going to cure all the cost ills for a local race team, but trends positively towards the weekly racer.
“I really believe from a owner perspective if it’s cheaper and it lasts longer that’s a win-win. I’m not a guy that’s going to put new tires on a RaceSaver car every night. That’s just not how I operate because I don’t think you need it. Ultimately, all this stuff costs money, and I still don’t like to spend money, so I think it’s going to be a benefit to the car owner. I don’t think it’s groundbreaking, like suddenly going to be a millionaire because we have another tire option. That’s not how it’s going to work, but I think it is a step in the right direction.”
Druke also indicated that he felt the two tires have the potential to be competitive against each other based on what he felt in the test last fall.
“, I think they’re going to be very close to even just based off the test,” said Drueke. “Because of the rules package that RaceSaver has with limited horsepower, the speeds are down. I think your window to get those two things closer together is much easier window to hit than it would be to make comparable tire for a 410 car.”
One of the logistical challenges that RaceSaver was prepared for with the new tire was how to get the product to competitors using existing channels within the organization.
“In the tire world the problem kind of becomes distribution,” said Hadan. “What we did was use our people that inspect and seal engines around the country as warehouse locations for the tires. We kind of had a built-in coverage for our areas that had high amounts of RaceSaver participants.”
Like any new endeavor in racing there has been some criticism of the new tire, particularly about it being produced overseas.
“It’s all over the place, just like every other race or deal involved deal,” Hadan explained about some of the critics of the new product. “I haven’t seen a rubber tree plant in the country for quite a while. A lot of tires might be made here, but I don’t think there are many of the products from here, so that’s not really a fair argument.”
As of this article the new RaceSaver tire will compete alongside the spec Hoosier right rear tire that RaceSaver has used in the past and the other tires on the other three corners that are allowed via their rulebook. The intention is not to replace those
“The intent is to work together and try to cover RaceSaver,” said Haden. “We’ve become a pretty big group of people. I mean, it’s a lot of participants and a lot of tires and we’ve ran into tire issues, even getting them with Hoosier, over different time periods. These new tires are just going to be an option. If people like it better, great. If not, we’ll keep working on our tire, but I think they’re going to be a good piece.”
As for other major changes to the popular RaceSaver division, Hadan doesn’t foresee any others coming soon as the division continues to grow at a rapid pace.
“This deal is growing big time. We’re going to have RaceSaver cars in the Northwest United States and Canada this coming year. It’s becoming a popular place to go. I still see the whole entire country becoming either race saver or 410 over the next several years.”
Other notes
- Buddy Kofoid will sit out next week’s events in Australia including the Grand Annual Sprintcar Classic. Pigdon Race Team that Kofoid drives for in Australia confirmed they would not be heading to the east coast as Kofoid recovers from a recent illness. The Pigdon team indicated they would team up again with Kofoid for the 2026-2027 Australia campaign.”
- Tires seem to be a hot topic this week in the sprint car world. Look for some more tire news to be released on Friday with another series.