Tires color Indy black with dust, yellow with cautions (cont'd)

"I commend NASCAR in handling [Sunday] like they did. I'm sure it was long and boring [Sunday], but NASCAR called a great race. They kept us from tearing up racecars for no reason. We had a couple of guys blow tires out, but I think as an entire sport, we did everything we could [Sunday].

"We've learned a lot. We'll take our lumps, I'm sure, and come back next year and put on a better show."

The inability of the tire combination selected by Goodyear to sustain a full-speed run of much more than 10 laps forced NASCAR to schedule cautions little more than 12 laps apart. The other five cautions were caused by accidents or debris -- but two of those were the result of apparent tire failures.

Ripped to shreds

A debacle like the one that happened Sunday shouldn't happen anywhere. But it absolutely cannot happen at Indy, writes David Caraviello.

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The tire selection was based on the results of a three-car tire test in April attended by Chevrolet driver Dale Earnhardt Jr., Dodge pilot Kurt Busch and Toyota jockey Brian Vickers.

After the race, at least Earnhardt could momentarily joke about it, but he quickly got serious.

"I helped tire test here [so] blame it all on me if you want to," Earnhardt said, momentarily smiling. "But when I was here [testing], they were wearing out in five laps, too."

Earnhardt said it was unacceptable for NASCAR to proceed ahead, knowing they had a problem and hoping it would get better, or fix itself.

Johnson's crew chief, Chad Knaus, said testing en masse might not have solved the problem, and NASCAR vice president of competition Robin Pemberton agreed.

"This place is very difficult to test," Knaus said, before stepping up to defend Goodyear for at least the second time this season. "One thing I want to put out there real quick. Everybody is going to point fingers at Goodyear and say they did a horrible job of testing the tire and bringing the tire in.

"Maybe they did make a mistake. You can't put all the blame on Goodyear. This car is a relatively unknown piece, especially coming to a racetrack like this where the surface is so abrasive. Everybody has to realize this car has about 50 percent of the downforce that we had from the cars we've had here in the past.

"There's really only five things that keep a car on the racetrack, and that's the four tires and the downforce. To think Goodyear can overcome that much with the little bit of testing they had, I think they did an OK job because they thought they were going on the same path that we had last year.

"They're doing a great job collectively; I think Goodyear is -- so I don't think people should stick it to 'em too hard. They're doing a pretty good job."

"Well, I think generally when you have an open test, you already got your tires picked and things like that have already been decided," Pemberton, a former crew chief, said. "I don't think an open test here would have done enough for what we all as competitors would want to have achieved. It wouldn't have helped I don't think.

"You may have had enough issues that you may have gone back and redesigned the tire. But then, I don't know if we could have [built the tires] in time. I mean, hindsight is 20/20.

"I think we'll just learn from this experience here this weekend and try to do a little bit better job next year when we come back."

Penske Racing crew chief Chris Carrier was another who supported the tire company.

"I'll echo something that I heard [Dale] Earnhardt Jr. say on TV," Carrier said. "With the situation that we had, the circumstances that we had, I think that everybody did as good as they could do to put on as good a show as possible. We did everything we could do to put on a good show for the fans [but] if they leave dissatisfied then we have failed as a group, as a business. (Continued)