Tires prove a problem for several teams in Atlanta 500

  Dale Earnhardt Jr. leads the field to the green, but later he would have to deal with a tire vibration and fell two laps down (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   ATLANTA
   Goodyear's Stu Grant says debris on the track and overly aggressive chassis setups are to blame for the tire issues here during Sunday's Atlanta 500.
    "The majority of the cars are looking great. Kurt Busch and Kasey Kahne have been running up front all day, and their tires look great," Grant, head of the company's racing operations, said late in the race.
   "Early on we saw a number of clear punctures. Robby Gordon had a punctured left-rear (lap five). Clint Bowyer had a clear puncture in the right-rear. Mark Martin had a punctured left-rear.
   "David Ragan had a right-front fender-rub after he hit the wall.
   "The other thing we're seeing now is some damaged inside shoulders on the right-front. We have not seen an air loss due to that. But they'll come in when they feel a vibration, with the inside shoulder of the right-front damaged.
    "It's just that they're aggressive on their setups perhaps. But clearly they're showing some abuse on the inside of the right-front shoulder.
    "It's a handling and setup related thing, something they can control...and they need to do that.
   Busch had a little chunk in a right rear early in the race but no other issues.
   Martin's fast lap here in tire testing in January was 185 mph, but in Friday qualifying 22 men topped 190, and race speeds are much quicker than any time here in the last few years.
   Is speed an issue here?  "We knew this was a fast setup when we tested," Grant said. "We saw some fast speeds when we tested. They're racing right now two seconds a lap faster than we ran here a year ago."
    Ragan: "I just cut a right-front tire going into turn three.  I had just touched the wall about four laps earlier, and everything seemed to be pretty good.  We still had some good speed in our Ford, and was just thinking about what to do on the next pit stop, and drove in on the bottom of turn three and felt it let go. 
    "I don't even think I had time to jump on the brakes real hard.
   "I don't think there's a tire issue.  This track is always a lot of fun once the tires do wear down, and I think Goodyear brought a pretty good tire."

    

   

      [Note: You can use Twitter as an easy headline service for mikemulhern.net stories, with our instant Tweets to your mobile as soon as our newest NASCAR story is filed. And mikemulhern.net is mobile-friendly for viewing. You can also use the orange RSS feed button as a quickie headline service on your laptop or home computer for mikemulhern.net stories, by creating a Live Bookmark RSS feed on your web browser's toolbar. Or you can create a Google Alert for mikemulhernnet.]