HAMPTON, Ga. -- Asked following Sunday's Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway if Goodyear took a step in the right direction with the type of tire it brought to the 1.54-mile track, driver Ryan Newman pulled no punches.

"No, we blew tires," he said bluntly. "Last time here, we didn't blow tires."

“

Overall, I'm very happy with the tire -- because they're fast, the drivers are comfortable, and it's a nice, racy setup. If the cars are set up well, the tire works just fine.

”

-- STU GRANT, GOODYEAR

And Newman was far from alone, as several cars suffered blown tires or shredded tires throughout the day.

But Stu Grant -- whose title is general manager of world-wide racing, Goodyear -- insisted his company brought a good tire to the event at the facility that is notoriously hard on them. He said the onus was on the teams to understand how to manage their tires, and that those who did experienced few or no problems. Others who pushed too hard on their tires, especially early, paid a price for it and suffered dire consequences.

"It's a handling and setup-related situation. It's something they can control, and they just need to do that," Grant said. "Overall, I'm very happy with the tire -- because they're fast, the drivers are comfortable, and it's a nice, racy setup. If the cars are set up well, the tire works just fine.

"We saw a number of punctures early on. But we saw some guys who were pretty aggressive in their setups."

Robin Pemberton, vice president of competition for NASCAR, agreed with Grant.

"I think we've put the pressure on Goodyear to bring tires to the track that will produce better racing, and I think you saw that [Sunday]," Pemberton said. "The grip level was better, the speed level was better, the passing was better. At some point in time, you know, it takes some teams more time than others to adjust to it -- and they have to take some stake in it and adjust accordingly to where they won't abuse the tires.

"We saw that with some of the teams. But all in all, we felt like Goodyear did a good job [Sunday] with bringing a good tire."

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