"I'm really excited that I didn't crash," said Stewart, who has been Goodyear's harshest critic. "That was half the battle in itself. Been racing 28 years and been a part of a lot of different professional series, and I've never seen a quality of racing tire like I've seen this weekend. ...

"If the rest of the year, if that's what we've got to look forward to is weekends like this, there will be a lot of drivers going into retirement a lot earlier, because nobody's going to want to keep doing this like this."

Stewart, admittedly, trades in hyperbole to get his points across. Earnhardt typically does not. Yet, as the news conference progressed, the level or Earnhardt's frustration escalated.

"There's a big difference between complaining and stating the obvious," he said. "You know, it is what it is. It's not a complaint. It is what it is. ... I don't think, for one, that the race was all that exciting. We couldn't run side-by-side -- we'd wreck, you know.

"They said they'd give us the (tire) 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."

Goodyear's stonewall response was as hard as the tires the company supplied for the race. Justin Fantozzi, manager of Goodyear's race tire sales and marketing, reiterated the same boiler-plate language he had told a smaller group of reporters the day before.

"There are 43 drivers and 43 crew chiefs and 30 owners -- that's 120 opinions," Fantozzi said.