Tire issues at 'Dega put Goodyear on the spot again (cont'd)

Fifteen laps later, another blowout -- this time on the right front of Brian Vickers' car while he was running directly behind the leaders in the tri-oval -- sent nine cars to the garage with heavy damage (watch video). On Lap 81, it was Mike Wallace who blew a tire on the backstretch, but was able to keep his car going straight and avoid another multi-car crash.

Hamlin was leading on Lap 98 when the right front blew, sending him careening from the low groove all the way into the outside retaining wall (watch video). After a few minutes, Hamlin was able to climb from his car, was placed on a stretcher and taken first to the infield medical center and then to a local hospital for further evaluation.

Then things seemed to settle down, until Jamie McMurray's right rear let go with a handful of laps remaining, setting up the final shootout that resulted in Tony Stewart's win (or was it Regan Smith?).

"There's a lot of questions we have to ask, a lot of things that have to be considered when you have a performance issue with a tire," Heinrich said. "The individual setups that the teams have decided on, the track conditions, that's what we're doing right now is we're downloading all those facts.

"We're looking at what material was coming off the racetrack, tire parts and tires that were coming off the cars, trying to put everything together, trying to find some correlation, trying to come up with a definite explanation."

So if the tire construction wasn't to blame for Sunday's troubles, what could it be?

"It does suggest to us that something is influencing the tire," Heinrich said, "because we've seen too many tires that looked too good, and we have really good conditions for tires. The ambient temperature is reasonable. The tires haven't shown any signs of heat or stress."

And Goodyear officials had to once again answer questions about their product, something that perhaps Heinrich is tiring of doing this season.

"I guess it goes with the territory," Heinrich said. "Tires are a really important component of this car and a very important part of the suspension, so we have to continue to develop our products so teams can develop their racecars.

"Right now, what we've done is put our nose to the grindstone and we're going to work our tails off until we're putting a tire on these cars that performs like you would expect."