During a lengthy, unflattering critique of the tires that Goodyear supplied the drivers at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Stewart said that other tire companies would do a better job in NASCAR.
That’s because for racing series and tire companies, tire wars are often viewed as a potential Armageddon.
Concern was expressed by some teams and some drivers. They were worried that a tire war could adversely affect safety as the companies, in a quest to be faster than the other, would go with softer and softer rubber compounds and the result would be blown tires.No other tire company could enter the sport until the Goodyear contract expires. For the time being, Firestone, the American company that is probably best suited to go after Goodyear’s contract when it expires, is not interested in approaching NASCAR
Did Goodyear jump the fence a little bit with the hardness of their Atlanta tires? Yes they did, but they did it based on all of the information that they got through all the testing at Atlanta Motor Speedway over the last few months.
Goodyear has always said that if it’s going to err one direction or the other, it would prefer to err on the conservative side.
I’m not going to even point one driver out, but I will get my message out there. I know there is talk even now about.“Goodyear not knowing what they are doing and there’s other tire companies that can replace them. ” You know what? Some of these drivers that are making these comments have not been in the sport that long — 10 years or less.
Could Goodyear have been more aggressive with their tires? Probably nobody realizes that more after the fact than Goodyear. But the bottom line is that we didn’t blow any right side tires, nobody hit the wall from blowing a tire, and we had a good, safe race.“I think we are all pretty frustrated. Tony took it to the fullest, ” Kevin Harvick said. “But he’s definitely right in the way the tire stuff has worked out. None of us really enjoy the way that we had to race. ” Stewart also said his comments were not directed at the people that make the tires or the ones that mount them on rims at the track, but at the designing engineers.
“Think about it. Every year we’ve blown tires. It’s like, how many years have they been doing this? At this stage of the game, how do you not figure it out? How could you have not figured out how to not blow tires and build a competitive tire? ” he said.
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