Tires: So is Tony Stewart on the mark, or over-reacting to Saturday's crash? Goodyear says Ryan Newman simply ran over debris

  
  
Goodyear handmakes thousands of NASCAR racing tires every week of the season (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)

  

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.
   Goodyear finds itself under the gun again, and the new NASCAR season has barely started.
   Tony Stewart blew off a lot of steam after teammate Ryan Newman blew a right-rear Saturday morning, the day before the Daytona 500, which forced both Newman and owner-boss-teammate Stewart to backup Chevys. Neither man was a bit happy, and they blasted Goodyear.
   But Goodyear racing boss Stu Grant says such frustration is to be expected: 
  "Tony is a race driver who is frustrated right now and the condition of the car, and that's what you hear in his comments.
   "It is not unusual to be very upset when you go through something like that.
   "'I do want to talk with Tony, and I do plan to talk with Tony."
   Grant said Newman's tire went down after he apparently ran over some debris on the track and cut it.
   "There isn't enough left of the upper sidewall to tell if there was a fender rub," Grant said of Newman's tire.
   "But what we did see a clear hole through the tread and both belts in the piece that we had off the car. So the evidence is that this is a classic case of a punctured right-rear."
   Stewart's outspoken complaints, though, didn't set well with Grant, though he has heard it before.
   Newman "had a problem with the right-rear in the 150s on Thursday," Grant said. "But there is no similarity between this and that right-rear, where he had a severe wear issue, with the tire down to the belts on Thursday.
   "This tread is clearly intact on the tire that failed. This bears no resemblance to what happened on Thursday."
    Debris on the track?
   "It was obviously something on the race track," Grant said. "It could have been something that fell off a car ahead of him. We see a lot of those cases."
   These Daytona tires are different from last year's tires, and that has drivers curious.
   "This race last year we had heat issues on right-front and right-rear all week," Grant said. "We fought high operating temperatures all week.
   "So we went to a different mold shape and a little tougher compound for the July race. There was a huge reduction in heat on the right-side tires.
   "We also made a little different left-side compound change and construction change, to soften it up and improve the handling.
   "So we made a great stride for the July event.
   "We did see a little excessive right-side heat in July. We tested in September, and toughened up the right-side compound, and to get some of the heat out we reduced some of the right-side tread gauge.
  "You don't see a lot of tread wear if the car is handling right, so we felt we were in pretty good shape to take that gauge out."
   The recall here after Thursday's 150s?
   "We had three right-side tires in Thursday's races --- two right-rears and a right-front – that had high wear in the centerline," Grant said. "The common thread with those was a manufacturing date of one of the components. And it did look a little unusual.
   "We have good records of our manufacturing components at all levels, so we look at how many there were out there in this garage. We found 12; we had four come back after normal scuffing, and we went to get the remaining eight.
   "We know we had a lot of tires that performed just fine. But we'd rather be safe than sorry, so we went out and got those other tires."
   Was Newman's tire close to the manufacturing date of the recalled tires? "Definitely not," Grant said.
   And Grant said "I honestly feel really good about our tire performance here, and I am happy with our tires.
   "This a good performing tire, a good wearing tire, and it allows the drivers to adjust the car to improve the handling. They have a few more tools now to set the car up.
  "So overall I am very pleased.
  "Certainly when you have an air loss, people ask questions, and that is something we will clear up.
   "But we saw no correlation between the tire issues Thursday and Ryan's tire problem."
  

  
Ryan Newman's blown right-rear (Photo: Getty Image for NASCAR)