LONG POND, Pa. -- The story of NASCAR's growing tire concerns and its new car reads something like a Goldilocks fairy tale; the tires are either too hard or too soft, but recently, just the right fit is no where to be found.

Goodyear and NASCAR grossly missed the mark last weekend at the storied Indianapolis Motor Speedway and brought a sub-par tire that failed to "rubber in" the track and tires were wearing to the cords and blowing after an average of 13 laps.

The debacle has drivers still discussing the outcome and what is to be done moving forward: more off-track testing, additional research and development from Goodyear, full-field tire tests or changes made to the car are among some of the solutions drivers offered up at Pocono Raceway this weekend preparing for Sunday's Sunoco Red Cross Pennsylvania 500.

But the Brickyard hasn't been the only victim of poor tire compounds that arguably affect competition. Recall the March event at Atlanta Motor Speedway where drivers criticized Goodyear for bringing a too-hard tire compound that left Tony Stewart irate and Jeff Gordon feeling like he was going to crash nearly every lap.

NASCAR and Goodyear are in the process of trying to determine a more consistent compound that satisfies the new car's shape, weight and balance issues.

Two-time Cup champion and winner of last weekend's Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, Jimmie Johnson, said time and a lot of additional testing could be the only fix.

"You can never underestimate how much testing helps," said Johnson, the fastest car in Friday's practice session, then again in qualifying. "We've got a different world today with this car and this is the first time we've run this car on these big tracks. There is 40-50 percent less downforce. The center of gravity is 5 inches higher. There are a lot of things that are promoting abuse to the tire. And it's just going to take us a while to sort it out."

His immediate solution: a softer left-side tire to take away two-tire stops and work more on two or three segments on lefts and just change rights.

"I think if the lefts are working harder it's going to help save the rights a little bit more. Yeah, it's going to bring the pace of the race up and then do you run into a new problem now that you're going faster and beating up the rights? There are a lot of questions to be answered, but I personally think having tires wear out is a good thing and we need to be wearing four out, not just the right sides," he added.

Jeff Burton, a Richard Childress Racing driver sitting third in the point standings, said the buck stops with Goodyear no matter the solution.

"Goodyear has to find a way to build a tire that we don't have to go through that process of having to lay rubber down on that particular racetrack to get where we can race on it," he said. "They have to find a way to build a tire that will not wear out but when they do that what's going to happen is the complaints are going to start coming about the grip level of the tire. That's what we had at Charlotte, that's what we had at Atlanta. If you go back and think about the last race in Atlanta where everybody complained so loudly about, the tire was the first time we haven't had a tire problem in Atlanta in a long time but everybody crawled up Goodyear's butt because the tires drove bad. Again, it's a difficult situation. If you ask me, if they're going to error I rather them error on the side that the car is driving bad than error on the side of wearing them out, but that's my opinion."

Lineup

Sunoco Red Cross Pennsylvania 500

Pos.	Driver	Speed	Time
1.	J. Johnson	168.215	53.503
2.	M. Martin	167.560	53.712
3.	D. Gilliland	167.187	53.832
4.	J. Gordon	167.106	53.858
5.	M. Kenseth	166.883	53.930
6.	R. Newman	166.784	53.962
7.	K. Kahne	166.522	54.047
8.	B. Vickers	166.522	54.047
9.	G. Biffle	166.516	54.049
10.	Ku. Busch	166.445	54.072

• Lineup | Videos

Burton added that the emphasis on the tire solution needs to focus on testing done away from the track, not at the track.

"The technology that Goodyear has access to and the technology that Goodyear needs to develop needs to be more concentrated in my opinion on what they can do from a simulation standpoint, from away from the racetrack standpoint because you can get so much more done there," Burton said. "Finding a way to build the tires correctly before they ever come to a test, to me that's where the technology needs to be invested and that's where if we're going to talk about doing tire testing that's more important than the actual testing itself, as seen by me."

Roush Fenway Racing driver Carl Edwards, coming off a second-place finish at Indianapolis, said Goodyear is faced with a Catch-22 explaining that drivers complain when the tire is too hard as well as too soft.

"I don't know what the answer is. All I know is that everyone gets the same time and as long as they are not blowing out I'm fine with it. They can make it as hard as they want to," Edwards said. "Personally, I had no problem with the tire they brought in Atlanta."

Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin said he has appreciated the progress Goodyear has made with the softer tires.

"It seemed like last year we were going through a little phase where we were having all these hard tires and that was a lot of the complaining last year was that the tires were way too hard; they were chattering and you can't race on them," he said. "They have at least tried to work on that and have gotten a lot better. To have excess tire wear is usually an odd thing to have and not a problem to have. I think they were trying to work on it, but I think as soon as they got it figured out -- the tire that they needed on the old car, we switched to the new car and it wears on the tires even more. Now it's something that they have to learn all over again and I think that part is taking longer."

Overall, most drivers agree that the new car's unknowns and restrictions will continue to present challenges for tire development.

"This car is just so different than the car previous," Hamlin said.

Bottom line, the issue won't be fixed overnight, said Johnson.

"Everybody has an opinion and I think that hurts NASCAR and it hurts Goodyear from time to time. They are trying to listen to all the input and every opinion that comes in. At the end of the day, they have to make the decisions," he said. "A lot has changed. In some ways, I think a stable environment will allow Goodyear to catch up and do what they need to do."

Certainly it resolves to fix the issue that plagued Indianapolis and will continue to research the problem, but veteran Mark Martin is nostalgic for the tires of yesteryear.

"They used to be gooey. They used to have oil in them or something in them. They were gooey, rubbery," Martin said. "They're powdery now. They're carbon, they make black dust. They don't put rubber down in the corners, they put black dust down in there and I'm not sure that's the same thing. Over the period of the last five or 10 years the tires just get harder and dryer and spitting off more black powder. I don't know, I kind of like the old gummy tires."

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• Words between Stewart, Goodyear expose a gap