Tire problems plague Hendrick Motorsports’ Jeff Gordon, others at Atlanta

By Bob Pockrass

Sunday, March 07, 2010

Several drivers and team has tire problems in the Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta.

Jim Fluharty
NASCAR Illustrated

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HAMPTON, Ga. – Jeff Gordon was one of several drivers who had tire problems during the Kobalt Tools 500 on Sunday, and there was really only one thing he could do.

“Slow down,” he said.

Slowing down isn’t a good strategy at Atlanta Motor Speedway, the fastest track in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. The high speeds and the worn track have challenged Goodyear to find a tire that doesn’t wear out too quickly but also isn’t so hard that the drivers have no grip.

“I’m not going to put any blame on anybody right now,” Gordon said. “We have to look at everything that we had versus our teammates and stuff. It’s one of those things where when they come here and test, you expect them to build a tire that we can abuse and that we can race hard with.

“That obviously wasn’t the case, so there is a very good chance we were too aggressive, but until we go back and analyze everything it’s hard to say.”

Hendrick Motorsports drivers seemed to have the most tire problems, but Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s vibration came from an unknown cause and his tires were fine, as were teammate Jimmie Johnson’s tires, according to Goodyear Racing general manager Stu Grant.

Other drivers who appeared to have issues were Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin and Stewart-Haas Racing teammates Ryan Newman and Tony Stewart.

“The tires are actually wearing very well,” Grant said. “We saw a lot of good, long runs in practice. The wear looked very good. In the race, the wear looks fine. The only thing we’re seeing is guys with either some kind of aggressive chassis setup or driving style are damaging the inside of the right front.”

Grant indicated that punctures caused the blowouts for Robby Gordon and Mark Martin and David Ragan’s was the result of a tire rub. Joey Logano’s car had been in a wreck before his tire blowout.

“We’ve put the pressure on Goodyear to bring tires to the race track that put on better racing,” NASCAR Vice President of Competition Robin Pemberton said. “We saw that today. The grip level was better, the speeds were better, the passing was better.

“At some point in time, it takes some teams more time than others to adjust to it and they have to take some stake in it and adjust accordingly.”

The speeds Sunday were about two seconds quicker a lap than a year ago, Grant said. The top finishers didn’t have issues.

“The reason they were having tire problems is they were using the tire more efficiently than we were and they were going faster because of it,” said Red Bull Racing’s Brian Vickers about the Hendrick camp. “So we have to find that happy medium. We need to be able to probably get a little more out of ours and they probably got a little bit too much out of theirs.”

For Gordon, he couldn’t get the car adjusted enough to for the problems to go away.

“We actually freed the car up to get it off the right front and the right front got worse,” Gordon said. “So you’ve got to look at everything.”