Goodyear pulls 600 more tires from circulation

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Goodyear officials admitted to a minor manufacturer problem that caused the tire maker to make the unique decision to pull several hundred more tires from its inventory for Nextel Cup teams.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. looks at tires after a practice run for the Daytona 500. Credit: AP

Goodyear originally isolated about 300 tires before the Budweiser Shootout after some teams experienced problems.

Stu Grant, general manager of global race tires, announced Thursday morning at Daytona International Speedway that would be expanded to 900 tires.

"There was a slightly lower level of adhesion between the tread and the top fabric ply on the tires that experienced problems when you compare them to other tires that specific production run," Grant said.

The "tread delamination" occurred in a small amount of tires within the group of 900, Grant said. And the problems experienced by the teams weren't necessarily all caused by defective tires.

"It is chassis-sensitive and heat-sensitive and so on and so forth, but since we do know there is a slightly lower level of adhesion in that grouping, we want to do everything we can to provide the best product we can," Grant said. "We met with NASCAR at 7 o'clock this morning after we got our data and told them what we were going to do, explained our results."

The majority of the tires within the group were fine, and the problems were isolated and "aggravated" by a pushing or loose car, Grant said.

"Yes, it was measurable, but the fact of the matter was we certainly ran a lot of tires that we did not experience problems with," Grant said.

Of the 300 pulled last weekend, 200 had been used, Grant said. Now, of the 900, about 600 had been used. Grant said Goodyear workers had been through the Nextel Cup garage Thursday morning to take the remaining 100 from teams.

Credit: AP

Goodyear officials flew a company plane to Daytona Beach to pick up tires for analysis at its headquarters in Akron, Ohio. Testing was done overnight, and Goodyear announced its findings Thursday morning.

Testing was done on samples of tires that had problems, samples of tires in the same group that didn't have problems and samples of tires from that had yet to be used.

Grant said Goodyear wasn't 100 percent sure what happened in the manufacturing process to cause the problem, but they would get to the bottom of it.

And he emphasized that there would be no shortage of tires this weekend, and the pull-back does not involve Busch Series or Craftsman Truck Series teams.

"We've got plenty of tires," Grant said.

Goodyear would be watching the situation closely but doesn't expect to have any more problems.

"Hopefully, with the pulling back of that particular process run, we won't experience any problems at all today," Grant said.