Busch bounces back from tire woes, hitting wall (cont'd)

Rogers added: "The tire deal definitely caught us off-guard. Goodyear supplies tire data and we knew that the balance would be a little bit different than last year, but we didn't think it was going to be that much different. The first thing that caught our attention was how much it changed the balance."

One team that avoided the tire problems that plagued so many others, including plenty of cars outside the JGR stable, was the winning machine of driver Jimmie Johnson. Crew chief Chad Knaus said that he suspected tires -- specifically right-front tires -- were going to be an issue heading into the event and tried to prepare for it.

"We saw some issues [Saturday]. We thought maybe it might go away [Sunday] with the pace dropping down. Unfortunately, it didn't," Knaus said. "We had trouble the first two or three pit stops, but we made some very, very hearty changes to the race car to try to get it better. And in the second half of the race, we didn't have any issues."

Told that it appeared to catch some other teams by surprise, Knaus added: "We saw it happening [Saturday]. We saw about 12 teams having problems with it, so we were pretty aware of it."

Oddly, Rogers indicated that the No. 18 team was dealing with so many other issues that perhaps the looming tire challenge escaped their attention. He said they arrived at Bristol with the "exact same setup that the No. 18 car won the last two races with" at the facility. But that setup didn't come close to producing the same spectacular results this time.

"We knew the car would be free coming off the truck. We just waited for the track to come to us and it never did," Rogers said. "We were so loose in qualifying that we about spun out and qualified terrible, in 38th. Then Saturday morning we went the other way, tightened it up, jumped the fence and spent Saturday afternoon undoing it.

"These guys on this team worked their butts off. They never gave up and they never questioned what they were working on."

Busch said that he felt like the team was playing catch-up almost from the very moment they unloaded the car Friday for practice and qualifying.

"It just wasn't the kind of car we wanted to bring back here to Bristol," he said. "We just worked from behind all weekend long.

"Then when the right front went down and I got into the wall there in about the middle of the race, things didn't look good. But the guys never gave up and I never gave up and somehow we got a decent finish out of it."

Rogers said he was aware that the tires provided by Goodyear for Sunday's race was going to be different than the ones Busch rode to his two victories at Bristol last year, when his crew chief was Steve Addington. He just didn't figure they would be as dramatically different as they turned out to be.

"It was what the Nationwide Series raced last year -- on the right side. And it was a new left-side tire," Rogers said. "This is a tire that they went to in Indy that lays down more rubber. They're trying to get the track to blacken up and take rubber better."

In the end, Rogers and Gibbs and Busch all decided to try to look at the bright side. It wasn't their best day, but they prevented it from being anywhere close to one of their worst.

"To come out of here with a ninth-place finish after all that happened. ... I know Kyle had won the last two here and I would have liked to have made it three in row, but I'm pretty proud of this team to get a top-10 out of that," Rogers said.

Gibbs said: "It's one of those things where you can go back in history and sort of figure out who has tire issues. And we're not really in that group, so [Sunday] was kind of a weird deal for us. Each race is a different animal, I guess, so we've got to do a better job.

"But I did think the No. 18 did a great job, surviving the tire issues, bouncing off the wall -- and still coming back to post a top-10 finish. I thought that was impressive."