Drivers Unleash Anger At Goodyear Over Atlanta Tire

[PressRoom-GFN]

By Deb Williams

HAMPTON, Ga. (March 9, 2008) – Throughout the weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway, several NASCAR drivers criticized the hard tire supplied by Goodyear, but after Sunday's Kobalt Tools 500 their anger about the situation boiled over.

The tire was much harder than the one the teams tested with on the 1.54-mile track last November, the day after the race. It simply wasn't compatible with the COT and Tony Stewart unleashed his anger at the situation immediately after finishing second.

“That's the most pathetic racing tire I have ever been on in my professional career,” Stewart said on FOX after climbing from his Toyota. “They exited out of Formula One, they exited out of the IRL, they exited out of CART, they exited out of the World of Outlaws. There's a reason for that, because Goodyear can't build a tire that's worth a crap. If I were Goodyear, I'd be really embarrassed about this weekend and what they brought us. It didn't keep us from winning the race, but how we got to second, I don't know. I'm really proud of our guys and really proud of their pit stops.

“It was ridiculous to have to race on a tire like this today. If they can't do any better than that, they ought to just pull out of this sport and save us all a bunch of headaches, because I guarantee you that Hoosier or Firestone or somebody could come in and do a lot better job than what they're doing right now.”

FOX analyst and former crew chief Larry McReynolds immediately defended Goodyear, noting that at Las Vegas Motor Speedway a week earlier several drivers lost their right-front tire during that race and no one experienced that situation at Atlanta.

However, Stewart continued to blast Goodyear in the media center during his post-race interview.

“To tell us a week before we come to Atlanta that all of a sudden we're going to have a new tire and give us the data a week before and expect everybody to figure it out in a week is pretty disappointing,” Stewart said. “This weekend shows their true colors and what they're about. They've done some great things over the years. But as technology has gone on and as the technology of these cars has gone on, they can't keep up. That's what puts us in positions like we were in this weekend. It makes for a miserable day out there.

“The bad thing is they've [Goodyear] got an exclusive deal. They have no reason to have to push and make their product better because they have no competition. I don't know what it's going to take to get them to give us a quality tire that this series and NASCAR deserves. But they obviously aren't capable of doing it right now.”
Dale Earnhardt Jr. said he was sure NASCAR President Mike Helton or Chairman Brian France would discuss the situation with Goodyear.

“They probably wouldn't like this any more than the drivers did,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I don't think for one the race was all that exciting. We couldn't run side by side. We'd wreck. We had to let each other go by. Every time you got beside a guy, you were just like, 'Take it. I can't go in the corner side by side.'

“They said they'd give us the data earlier in the year, around Daytona or before. But no amount of time would have prepared you for that. You weren't going to hook that tire up. It was way too hard.”

Stewart said the drivers were addressing the issue because they didn't want to race weekly on tires like they had to contend with at Atlanta.

“There wasn't anything about today's race that was fun, I don't think, for anybody,” Stewart continued. “It wasn't like we ran three or four green-flag lap runs. We had one green-flag pit stop in that whole deal. That's just how bad the field was.

“If your car was a little off, it was way off. It wasn't like you could make the difference as a driver. Like Junior said, if somebody got to you, got on the outside of you, you didn't have a choice of whether you wanted to let them go. You had to. It was either that or you were putting yourself in jeopardy of wrecking your race car. There were a lot of times you were by yourself you were putting yourself in jeopardy of wrecking your race car.

“It's not that we're just trying to beat 'em up. I don't know how else you plead with them or get their attention enough to bring something that's better than what it is. I mean, this isn't the first time that they've been to Atlanta Motor Speedway.”

Earnhardt Jr. said the main thing was not to do the same thing at Darlington Raceway, which has been repaved. He also believes the COT may be part of the problem.

“They're putting a lot of load on the right-front tire with the bump stop,” Earnhardt Jr. explained. “It puts a lot of load on the tires. So Goodyear thinks the tire is going to wear out worse, they're going to have more right-front tire failures. Every time they have a tire failure, they think of it as their product is getting lambasted on national television; that it's bad news for them when the consumer sees it.

“But everybody knows that watches the race there's a reason for a tire blowing. It's not 'cause it's a bad tire. We've never had a tire blow because it was defective. They wear out and you wear them down to the air. But you just need to slow down if you're wearing tires out that bad.”

Stewart agreed with Earnhardt Jr. that it was a public relations game.

“That's the reason that Goodyear spends the money they spend in NASCAR to be the exclusive tire provider. It's good advertising for 'em,” Stewart said. “But with that comes a responsibility. And it is a responsibility of providing safe tires for us. But at the same time you've got to provide a product that is competitive and is current and lets us do the things in the race car that NASCAR expects us to be able to do as drivers during the course of a race.”

Earnhardt Jr. said he didn't like “bashing” Goodyear about its tires any more than the Ohio-based firm liked hearing it, but he wasn't going to put up with the situation that existed Sunday.

“Hopefully, we can all get along and come up with something better than this,” Earnhardt Jr. concluded.

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