Those with tire problems point finger at Goodyear (cont'd)

Newman, naturally, was among several drivers who disagreed.

"Goodyear's got some work to do," Newman said. "It's a safety situation. We popped one. There are a lot of guys who popped one. It was too sensitive for the guys who didn't get it right.

"The guys who had their cars just right, yeah, they didn't have any issues. But either way, they've got a little bit more work to do here. This is a challenging place for Goodyear and we'll come back and test for them if they'll let us."

Goodyear held a tire test at AMS in January and Pemberton admitted after Sunday's race that another test could be in order at the facility in the summer. A second 2010 race will be held at AMS in the fall on Labor Day weekend.

"They'll test all summer long at a lot of different places," Pemberton said. "Atlanta's always on the schedule because of the changing weather conditions and everything."

Another driver who was not very pleased with the tire used Sunday was Jeff Gordon.

"I think it's one of those things where when they come here and test, you expect them to build a tire that we can abuse and that we can race hard with. That obviously wasn't the case," said Gordon, who finished 18th. "There is a good chance we were too aggressive -- but until we go back and analyze everything, it's hard to say."

Meanwhile some drivers, such as Brian Vickers, thought the tire was just fine.

"Our tire wear seemed to be really good. So I thought the tires were great," Vickers said.

He implied that the cars in the Hendrick Motorsports stable -- which by extension could include the No. 39 Chevrolet driven by Newman for Stewart-Haas Racing, which receives technical assistance from Hendrick -- just missed the correct car setups.

"Goodyear brought a great tire. I think some of the guys saw a lot of the Hendrick cars having tire problems, which is a bad thing. It really hurt them," Vickers said. "But the reason they were having tire problems is they were using the tire differently than we were and they were going faster because of it.

"So we have to find that happy medium. We need to be able to probably get a little more out of ours and they probably got a little bit too much out of theirs. But all in all, I thought Goodyear brought a fantastic tire here. It was almost too good. The cars had more grip at the end of the run than they used to have on Lap 5, but it was still a great race."

Newman, however, would not back off his criticism of Goodyear.

"We didn't blow tires the last time here," Newman said. "We just had really bad inconsistencies. We went from inconsistent tires to tires that were popping in the right front and that's not good.

"It's not any gain, especially from a safety issue. Inconsistent tires are still safe. Tires that blow out are not safe."

Video: Tire issues plague numerous teams at Atlanta