Racing Tire Troubles at Indy

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INDIANAPOLIS -- "Weird" only began to describe the 15th Allstate 400 at the Brickyard on Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, on a day when tire issues created a 400-mile race in which the longest stretch of green flag racing was 13 laps -- once.

In what everyone connected with the event -- Goodyear, NASCAR and the competitors -- called a major miscalculation in the tire combination that was selected for the 160-lap event, NASCAR was forced to administer the race using a series of "competition cautions."


Well, I think there was a lot of passing -- I know I had to pass a lot of cars -- so it had to be entertaining on television when we had the green flag.

JIMMIE JOHNSONSix of the 11 cautions, which resulted in a total of 52 laps, or 32 percent of the race being run under a yellow flag, were artificial.

Goodyear's director of race-tire sales, Greg Stucker, said the company would keep working.

"We've got to really sit down and see [if the problem could have been prevented]," Stucker said. "Obviously, the tread wear didn't improve as we thought it would over the course of the afternoon [and] we don't have an answer to why that didn't happen, so we've got to go back and look at it and try to figure out how to make it better."

Obviously, the feelings of winner Jimmie Johnson didn't match everyone else in the field; but most of the 43-man field joined in offering support to Goodyear and NASCAR for a cautious approach to the day.

After the track showed no signs of absorbing rubber through the first day and a half of practices and qualifying, NASCAR and Goodyear decided to give teams an extra set of tires for the race, and then took the extra step of bringing 1,600 tires intended for next weekend's race at Pocono Raceway as a backup plan.

Those were never needed, but virtually the entire race was run on a razor's edge of suspense over the next tire problem, rather than the next pass for the lead. Johnson, though, was satisfied.

"Well, I think there was a lot of passing -- I know I had to pass a lot of cars -- so it had to be entertaining on television when we had the green flag," Johnson said. "I can honestly say nobody wanted to be in this position: Goodyear, NASCAR, teams, drivers, owners -- nobody wanted to be in this situation -- but it's the situation that we had.

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"I commend NASCAR in handling [Sunday] like they did. I'm sure it was long and boring [Sunday], but NASCAR called a great race. They kept us from tearing up racecars for no reason. We had a couple of guys **** tires out, but I think as an entire sport, we did everything we could [Sunday].

"We've learned a lot. We'll take our lumps, I'm sure, and come back next year and put on a better show."

The inability of the tire combination selected by Goodyear to sustain a full-speed run of much more than 10 laps forced NASCAR to schedule cautions little more than 12 laps apart. The other five cautions were caused by accidents or debris -- but two of those were the result of apparent tire failures.


Ripped to shreds
A debacle like the one that happened Sunday shouldn't happen anywhere. But it absolutely cannot happen at Indy, writes David Caraviello.

Complete story, click here
The tire selection was based on the results of a three-car tire test in April attended by Chevrolet driver Dale Earnhardt Jr., Dodge pilot Kurt Busch and Toyota jockey Brian Vickers.

After the race, at least Earnhardt could momentarily joke about it, but he quickly got serious.

"I helped tire test here [so] blame it all on me if you want to," Earnhardt said, momentarily smiling. "But when I was here [testing], they were wearing out in five laps, too."

Earnhardt said it was unacceptable for NASCAR to proceed ahead, knowing they had a problem and hoping it would get better, or fix itself.

Johnson's crew chief, Chad Knaus, said testing en masse might not have solved the problem, and NASCAR vice president of competition Robin Pemberton agreed.

"This place is very difficult to test," Knaus said, before stepping up to defend Goodyear for at least the second time this season. "One thing I want to put out there real quick. Everybody is going to point fingers at Goodyear and say they did a horrible job of testing the tire and bringing the tire in.

"Maybe they did make a mistake. You can't put all the blame on Goodyear. This car is a relatively unknown piece, especially coming to a racetrack like this where the surface is so abrasive. Everybody has to realize this car has about 50 percent of the downforce that we had from the cars we've had here in the past.

"There's really only five things that keep a car on the racetrack, and that's the four tires and the downforce. To think Goodyear can overcome that much with the little bit of testing they had, I think they did an OK job because they thought they were going on the same path that we had last year.

"They're doing a great job collectively; I think Goodyear is -- so I don't think people should stick it to 'em too hard. They're doing a pretty good job."

"Well, I think generally when you have an open test, you already got your tires picked and things like that have already been decided," Pemberton, a former crew chief, said. "I don't think an open test here would have done enough for what we all as competitors would want to have achieved. It wouldn't have helped I don't think.

"You may have had enough issues that you may have gone back and redesigned the tire. But then, I don't know if we could have [built the tires] in time. I mean, hindsight is 20/20.

"I think we'll just learn from this experience here this weekend and try to do a little bit better job next year when we come back."

Penske Racing crew chief Chris Carrier was another who supported the tire company.

"I'll echo something that I heard [Dale] Earnhardt Jr. say on TV," Carrier said. "With the situation that we had, the circumstances that we had, I think that everybody did as good as they could do to put on as good a show as possible. We did everything we could do to put on a good show for the fans [but] if they leave dissatisfied then we have failed as a group, as a business.

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"I think we did everything we could do to give 'em a good show under the circumstances. Hopefully, next year we can figure something out coming back to this place. Hopefully, we can all learn from it. I'm sure Goodyear is going to do everything they can to make the next outing and every outing better.

"I said it before and I'll say it again: I think they're between a rock and a hard place on trying to make good tires for some of these races with these cars at these racetracks. It's a tough call and some other people have tried and they've failed, too.

"I don't think you need to be shooting a lot of arrows at Goodyear until you've walked a couple miles in their shoes."

Everyone acknowledged that NASCAR's new car, with its higher center of gravity that creates a greater weight transfer to the right-side tires and thus greater stress, is a challenge.

"Well, let's look at it this way -- it's fair to say we won't do the same thing next year we did this year," Pemberton said. "And it would be fair to say everybody will put their best foot forward and try to do a better job.

"But we've also been here 15 times, all right. And in 15 times, the only other problems that we've had is having to really regulate low tire pressures and make sure the teams didn't beat the tire up -- we're 1 for 15 in the loss column.

"That coupled with having a new car; that coupled with people didn't think we were going to need to test here. You know, everybody's got a little skin in the game here. I think everybody knew that -- the teams knew it, we knew it [and] Goodyear knew it.

"I think that's why you saw everybody working together on pit road [Sunday], in the tower and in the Goodyear building, to do everything we could to manage the tire, put on the best race we could for the fans.

"So, you know, we've got one time we didn't do the right thing. We tried to put our best foot forward and make the best judgment calls that we could getting prepared for this race. For sure, it didn't come off the way we wanted it to."
 
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