PRI 2025: Race Star Beadliner Wheel Changes The Game

If you have been paying attention to the small-tire world, specifically the True 10.5 and No-Time classes, you know things are getting out of hand in the best way possible. At PRI 2025, Race Star unveiled the hardware that will make insanely quick passes even more common: its 15×13-inch Beadliner Wheel, built specifically for the 28×10.5 tire.

This technology has been a staple in Pro Mod for years, and we even saw Stevie “Fast” Jackson praising it as far back as 2018. But until now, you could mostly only get beadliners in 16-inch sizes for massive tires. Race Star realized that small-tire cars are effectively just scaled-down Pro Mods now, so they worked with Hoosier to shrink the tech down to a 15-inch package.

The system uses a specialized liner tire originally developed for the ARCA series. It sits inside your standard drag slick, creating a dual-layer system that locks the beads and supports the sidewall from the inside out. L.B. Davis from Race Star mentioned that despite the complexity, you mount the whole setup in about 10 minutes, which is a huge plus for crew guys in the pits.

The physics behind this Beadliner Wheel is fascinating. On a conventional setup, when you hit a slick with 3,000 horsepower, the tire wants to wrap up and distort into an H-shape. That distortion costs you forward drive. The liner keeps the tire perfectly round, ensuring the contact patch stays flat and effective.

There is a catch, though. This setup adds roughly 10 to 11 pounds of rotating weight per corner. You need a car with the grunt to overcome that inertia, but the trade-off is cleaner power delivery and higher trap speeds. It transforms the violent wrinkling of a launch into a smooth application of force. The only thing left to see is how the rule makers handle it. If this wheel offers too much of an edge in chassis stability, we might see immediate weight penalties or bans in certain stock-suspension classes.