Goodyear says common processing date reason for taking back eight tires
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – After Ryan Newman, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Mark Martin had problems in the 150-mile qualifiers, Goodyear noticed that portions of their tires in question were all manufactured on the same day.
So Goodyear took back the eight tires that had the same components made on that day as a precautionary measure. Results of any tests won’t be known until next week, said Goodyear general manager of racing tires Stu Grant.
No other tires will be mounted for the Daytona 500 on Sunday that came from that batch, Grant said Saturday morning at Daytona International Speedway.
“It looked like either a tire that blistered and kept blistering or a tire that was severely worn,” Grant said. “It looked a little more severe than some of the other ones. It looked different enough that it’s why we looked at the sequence numbers and see if there was anything common there. We noticed a common processing date for one of our manufacturing components.”
The teams were not doing anything excessive with the setups, Grant said.
“Everything we know is circumstantial right now,” Grant said. “You look at it and you say you have the same common processing date for these tires, so let’s get them back and be sure.”
