premium on the driver's. We certainly can understand drivers being frustrated after 500 grueling miles. However, Goodyear will work with us and the teams to make things better. They always have."
Tony Stewart right after he exited the car:
“Goodyear can’t build a tire that’s worth a crap. If they can’t build a tire better than that, then they need to pull out of the sport. That’s the worst tire I’ve ever raced on in my entire career. That was the most pathetic racing tire that I've ever been on in my professional career," Stewart said. "They (Goodyear) exited out of Formula One. They exited out of IRL. They exited out of World of Outlaws and there is a reason for that. Goodyear can't build a tire that is worth a crap. If I were Goodyear, I would be really embarrassed about what they brought here. I guarantee you Hoosier of Firestone or somebody can come in and do a lot better job than what they are doing right now."
Tony on PRN:
He said the same thing he did on TV, then added he was going to go home and if any vehicle of his had Goodyear tires on it, he was going to take them off!
Tony after he cooled down a bit:
"I'm really excited that I didn't crash — that was half the battle," said Stewart, who moved from 11th to eighth in the point standings Sunday afternoon. "I've been racing 28 years and been a part of a lot of different professional racing series and never seen the quality of racing tire like I've seen this weekend. There has to be something in between.
"If Goodyear thinks that was their best effort today, I'm really disappointed. These teams spend so much money to come here and the competition is so close that 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 and expect everybody to figure it out in a week is pretty disappointing. I can't say it's surprising because they've been run out of Formula, CART, the IRL, World of Outlaws and USAC divisions because they couldn't keep up and make a quality enough product“.
Jeff Gordon after he got out of the car:
"I felt like I was going to crash every single lap. I'm exhausted right now. I feel like I've run 1,000 miles here. There is just no reason for this. And it's not any one person or group's fault. It's a combination. This car, this tire, at this race track was just terrible."
Dale Jr. on the tires:
"I know Goodyear doesn't like criticism, but I'm not going to sit here and put up with this," said Dale Earnhardt Jr. after his third-place finish. "We couldn't race side by side or we would wreck. Hopefully we can all get along and do something about this."
"I went from running a tire with the cords showing to one that I could still see the center line after 30 laps," Earnhardt said. "Good Lord, there has to be a lot of room in between. This can't be where we're headed."
"Please don't bring this tire to Darlington," Earnhardt said. "As horrible as today was, that would be worse. I'm not part of the test, but I'm going just to ask drivers how it feels out there."
"This was just a bad combination, this tire at this track," Earnhardt said. "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 could run like that for 10 laps, to the next pitstop. That was a good tire.” "But I'm still seeing the center line, 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."
Now these are just the drivers who got quoted about how bad the tires were. A lot of them complained on the radio during the race and were complaining about the tires during practice and qualifying. The drivers complained about the inconsistency from one set of tires to another. They started complaining back in Daytona, but it fell upon deaf ears and didn’t get mentioned because nobody was willing to go on record about them or the media wasn’t willing to report the problems. Not until Atlanta and Tony blasted them. This opened the doors for the other drivers to openly complain.
Does NA$CAR actually listen to the driver’s complaints? Well, sort of. In one ear and out the other. The wind tunnel effect from nothing in between the ears. Over the last few years, the tire policy has been dictated more by NA$CAR to protect Faux King Brian’s Brand Sense client than for the safety of the drivers. We’ve had rock hard tires that turned the races into being pretty boring because it ended up being a gas and tire mileage race, but the tires didn‘t blow out. Then they went soft (insert juvenile laugh here) and we saw them blowing out tires left and right like at Charlotte. Remember that fiasco and the mandated tire pressures which still didn’t solve the problem? As long as they had the old car, they had plenty of time to come up with a decent tire for all of the tracks. And as long as the Uni-Car has been in development, they should’ve, in theory, had a good jump on developing a tire.
We’ve had tires blowing out and going flat since Daytona in all 3 series. The drivers were cursing the tires then and they’re still cursing them now. The apologists, official mouthpieces, and Kool Aid drinkers all place the blame on the teams. Too much camber, too little camber, too high or low of an air pressure, and the excuses just keep coming. When teams run conservative set-ups and still have tires blowing out for no reason, then it’s not a problem with the car or the driver. It’s the tire.
As much as NA$CAR loves to preach to us fans
about driver safety, the tire is a part of keeping a
driver safe. They have to be able to “feel” how the
car is handling. They have to be able to turn the
cars to avoid wrecks and keep from wrecking .
They also need tires that aren’t going to blow out
when somebody breaks wind in close proximity
to them.
So what’s the solution? Something I suggested
awhile back. An actual, independent tire test
supervised by an outside agency that doesn’t
have to answer to the tire manufacturers or
NA$CAR. The tire manufacturer with the best
performance wins. Then we just might get some
tires that are safe, tires that the teams are comfortable with, and a tire contract that’s not awarded simply because the manufacturer is a client of Faux King Brian.
Right now, what we have with the tires can best be summed up by an old quote from the first US astronaut, Alan Shepard. When reporters asked Alan Shepard what he thought about as he sat atop the Redstone rocket, waiting for liftoff, he replied, “The fact that every part of this ship was built by the low bidder.”
Speaking of Navy aviators, a tip of the hat to all of the fine men and women serving in the Navy’s aviation program.
Motherhood, Apple Pie, & John Wayne
Mad Mikie
Curmudgeon at Large
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