Hard tires, aggressive drivers a volatile mix

CONCORD, N.C. -- Jeff Green's crumpled racecar sat in the rear of the Nextel Cup garage area, littering the concrete with fluid. Jeff Burton's car rolled back onto the track with a large piece of plastic covering its collapsed rear end. And Jeff Gordon's vehicle was towed in by a wrecker, its front end smashed and left side bent in from a vicious T-bone hit.

Fireworks erupted in the longest event of the NASCAR season long before the sun went down, with 19 different drivers caught up in array of accidents spanning the first 78 laps of Sunday's Coca-Cola 600. The Lowe's Motor Speedway garage was a triage unit before the field had completed even a quarter of the 400-lap event, with crews making desperate attempts to fix wrecked cars and drivers seeing their hopes dashed before dinnertime.

Lap-by-Lap

Casey Mears used fuel to his advantage and stayed out while others came in to pit. The move worked as Mears holds on to win the Coca-Cola 600.

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The most prominent was points leader Jeff Gordon, whose run of seven straight top-four finishes ended when he made contact with the car of Tony Raines on Lap 61. Gordon's No. 24 car slammed the wall, and was broadsided so hard by the onrushing vehicle of A.J. Allmendinger that it bounced into the air (watch video). Prior to the accident, Gordon had completed every lap on the Nextel Cup circuit this season.

Gordon's crash came one lap after the field had restarted following a 13-car pileup, which started when contact between Allmendinger and Jimmie Johnson sent a tire tread flying off the No. 48 car (watch video). It was a volatile mix: a hard tire compound, a slick racing surface, and too many drivers too eager too early in the event.

"It's a 600-mile race," said Gordon, who was uninjured. "It's hot and slick during the day like this and with these tires, and it just makes it very hairy. You've got to be careful. I see guys driving way over their heads too early in a 600-mile race, too early for any race. That's why we've seen some of these incidents, and that's why I got caught up in that one."

At one point, so many cars were in the garage that the speedway's scoring pylon showed just 12 numbers. Some, like Johnson and Tony Stewart, survived with only scrapes and were able to get back into contention. Others, like Burton and Juan Montoya, limped back onto the track after major reconstructive surgery, many laps off the lead.

Why was it so crazy, so early in a race where many wait until the nighttime portion to make their move? "These tires aren't very good," Allmendinger said. Greg Biffle, who went out on lap 46 after a blown tire sent him into the wall, agreed.

"I hate to talk bad about anybody or bash anybody, but I just have to tell you that I think we have the worst tires in racing, period," he said. "Nobody can drive these things. They're so hard. Nobody can race side-by-side. It just doesn't put on a good race. We need to soften the tire up, use some technology and get downforce or horsepower out of the cars. Whatever it takes, to where we're not doing stuff like this. The tire is just so hard that it just does that for a period of time and blows out." (Continued)