A tough balancing act between safety and racing

NASCAR.COM -- Sometimes trouble sneaks up on you. Sometimes you see it coming. For this two-weekend stint at Lowe's Motor Speedway, however, trouble was courteous enough to make an appointment.

So no one should have been surprised when trouble came knocking, right on time, two Saturday nights ago during the first lap of the Nextel Open. That's when Juan Montoya made a bold / dubious move to pass on the outside. To the astonishment of few, the tires didn't stick.

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At that point, tires had been on everyone's mind for some time. Specifically, I'm referring to the D-4020 compound left-side tires and -- perhaps more to the point -- the D-4022 compound right-side tires supplied by Goodyear.

As racing tires go, these are hard. Very hard. And they've won no popularity contest with drivers, either.

"I hate to talk bad about anybody or bash anybody, but I just have to tell you that I think we've got the worst tires in racing -- period," said a frustrated Greg Biffle after the Coca-Cola 600. "Nobody can drive on these things. They're so hard. Nobody can race side-by-side. It just doesn't put on a good race."

You know the people at Goodyear hate hearing those sorts of comments. Goodyear has been supplying tires to NASCAR for decades and by all accounts, has developed one heck of a solid reputation for manufacturing race tires that are safe, reliable and, most importantly, raceable.

Give Goodyear credit. It's not like they didn't give plenty of advance warning about these tires. In addition to what teams learned about how these same tires performed the night before in the Carquest Auto Parts 300 Busch Series race, or the weekend before in the All-Star Challenge, there was also a two-day test session with these compounds at Lowe's earlier this month.

As if that wasn't enough of a heads up, this was also the exact same tire combination that raced the 600 and the All Star Challenge last year. Plus, this much maligned right-side tire was raced at Lowe's last October in combination with a slightly softer left-side tire to help teams with grip.

Laying the blame for any team's poor performance solely at the feet of Goodyear simply isn't fair. There'd been time to prepare.

But the fact remains, the tires were indeed very hard. When they lost grip, they did it all at once. Last night, side-by-side racing was at a premium. Drivers didn't like them. So why did Goodyear choose these compounds? (Continued)