Tony Stewart, in a post race interview commented:
“Been racing 28 years and been a part of a lot of different professional series and never seen a quality of racing tire like I've seen this weekend. And if Goodyear thinks that was their best effort today, I'm really disappointed because, you know, these teams spent so much money to come here and the competition is so close.
You know, 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.”
Dale Earnhardt, Jr. expounded on what he felt the actual issue with the tire was, from a driver’s point of view:
“This was just a bad combination, this tire at this track. Just a poor combination. I know the tire we used to run would wear into the cords, but you could still run hard on it. It wasn't dangerous. You would run into the cords and run like that for 10 laps. That was a pretty good tire. Even though it was on a cord, you could still run it for a while, get to the next pit stop.
I'll tell you, I'm still seeing the center line in my tires, the mold line in my tire after 30 laps. So I went from running a tire that would wear to the cord to a tire that I still see the center cord after 30 laps. There's got to be several combinations in between that.”
So the guys were pretty exasperated out there today. But we didn’t see much in the way of wrecks or the usual slides and blowouts we see with lousy tires…why not?
“The reason we're talking about it and the reason that we're bringing it to everybody's attention is because we don't want to have to race on tires like we raced on today every week,” Stewart said. “This wasn't fun today. There wasn't anything about today's race that was fun I don't think for anybody. I mean, do something about this, make it better.”
Earnhardt, Jr. added:
“I don't think for one the race was all that exciting. We couldn't run side by side. We'd wreck, you know. 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. No one else out there really could either.
But, you know, 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.”
Well then, I’d say these fellows probably represent the majority of drivers that were on the track this past Sunday. So now what? Now the ball is back in Goodyear’s court…or NASCAR’s…or somebody that knows about tires.
While our drivers were pretty vocal about their concern in Atlanta, it was a good race considering no one was hurt because of the unmanageable tire conditions. Will we be so lucky at the next race? Or the next?
Earnhardt, Jr., who can usually see things from a pretty broad perspective, did comment on the future:
“I guess the big thing is, is don't do this as Darlington. That's the main thing.
But everybody knows that watches the race, you know, 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. I mean, you know, 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.
But don't do this to us at Darlington 'cause that…yeah, that will definitely be…that might be able to top how horrible today was or how frustrating it was to run today if this is the case.”
I guess that pretty much says it…these drivers were frustrated, upset and real grateful that no one got hurt…I’d say that’s enough to get you riled up a bit no matter whether you’re a driver, a crew chief, the NASCAR king or a Goodyear engineer. I’m sure this saga is far from over. We’ll keep you posted.
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