BRISTOL, Tenn. -- It hardly looks like a wellspring of controversy . The drab, gray Goodyear building at Bristol Motor Speedway sits nondescriptly inside Turn 3, overshadowed by the height of the 36-degree banking rising up behind it. Men in blue windbreakers and ball caps unload tires from the back of a tractor-trailer, and wind them onto wheel hubs using tall hydraulic machines.

It's a cheerless, workmanlike place where everything smells like rubber, and it's ground zero for a dispute that's pitted a two-time NASCAR champion against the sport's official tire supplier. Tony Stewart's biting criticism of Goodyear following last weekend's Sprint Cup race at Atlanta found plenty of support within the garage area, and exposed a gap between a tire company that says it's trying to appease everybody, and drivers who say it doesn't listen enough.

"Obviously I was really vocal about what I said," Stewart said Friday, as the rain fell at Bristol. "The thing is that you shouldn't have to get to that point. The problem is that we've been in this situation with them before, and tried to do it the right way, and tried to do it behind closed doors, and tried to be politically correct about it, but we didn't get results. Obviously this week it got somebody's attention -- that can do something and make a difference now."

Friday the cold war between Stewart and the tire manufacturer showed the first signs of thawing, when a rain delay at Bristol allowed time for a meeting between the driver and Goodyear general manager Stu Grant. Goodyear officials had previously said they had tried to contact Stewart, who hadn't returned their calls.

"It was an excellent meeting," Grant said in a statement. "It was constructive. It was extremely worthwhile to sit down and have a discussion with him. Tony was able to express his concerns and I listened to his concerns. I was able to explain our process, and we both talked about how, moving forward, we can improve the process of developing tires for NASCAR Sprint Cup racing together."

Added Stewart: "We're hoping that Goodyear will now work with us a little better on the racing side of things and rely on our input a little more, because we are the ones driving the cars. It was a good meeting, but at the end of the day, it's up to Goodyear to make it right. If having this meeting helps to make things better down the road, then this meeting was a success."

That meeting came after the tire company had shifted some of the blame back to Stewart, who they say was uncooperative during a December test at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, a fast 1.5-mile tri-oval similar to the Atlanta track the series competed on last week.

"I'm going to be flat honest with you. Tony was invited to the Las Vegas tire test in December, because he was very vocal with his displeasure with the Las Vegas racetrack and our tire recommendation previously," said Greg Stucker, Goodyear's director of race tire sales and marketing. "We said, 'We understand that, so we want you to be involved in this test.' He was there, but I'd say he probably wasn't really involved. He wasn't into it." (Continued)