Tires, wrecks at Dover lead to Petty's final Cup victory

Jamie McMurray's recent resurgence with Ganassi Earnhardt Racing brings to a mind a similar situation at Dover 15 years ago for Kyle Petty in Felix Sabates' car. Petty was in the midst of a two-season winless streak when the Winston Cup Series visited the new concrete surface at the Monster Mile for the 1995 Miller Genuine Draft 500.

Right from the get-go, the race weekend was anything but typical. The tires brought to the track by Goodyear -- a portion of the 3,800 or so on hand -- immediately began to blister during Friday's practice session and things escalated during the Busch Series race on Saturday when huge chunks of rubber began breaking off, forcing the tire company to take the unusual step of trucking in an entire semi-tractor trailer of leftover tires from their Charlotte facility.

Dover 1995: Results

Miller Genuine Draft 500

Pos.	Driver	Car	Make
1.	Kyle Petty	42	Pontiac
2.	Bobby Labonte	18	Chevrolet
3.	Ted Musgrave	16	Ford
4.	Hut Stricklin	26	Ford
5.	Dale Earnhardt	3	Chevrolet

• Complete Results

''We tested tires here three times, and each time we got a lot of severe wear,'' Goodyear racing director Leo Mehl said. ''So we were convinced that the heavier tire [with additional tread] was the way to go, so we could run 70 or 80 laps before a normal pit stop.

''And suddenly [Friday] afternoon, after those 80 cars had been out there running, the track rubbered in and stopped wearing the tires out. Hence, the heat problem."

Goodyear immediately recalled all of the tires at the track, and did something unprecedented. The company scrounged up 1,100 tires -- left fronts from the previous season's race at Charlotte, left rears from a former trip to Dover and right-side tires from Darlington -- and then asked teams to check around their shops to come up with a few more spares.

''It would sure be nice if you could bring some of your own,'' Winston Cup director Gary Nelson said to crew chiefs and drivers in an unusual meeting before Saturday's final practice. ''Call your shops see if you can have people bring them up.''

By Sunday morning, there were at least six sets of tires for each team, and NASCAR officials then scheduled a rare 30-minute Sunday morning practice session to check tire wear. The stop-gap solution worked perfectly, as tires weren't a problem in the race.

Instead, the new concrete pavement created a different issue for drivers, as Dale Earnhardt explained on Saturday.

''They did a fine job of cementing,'' Earnhardt said. ''It's smooth, as far as that goes. But you can't run side by side, so what's the use in having it? They're defeating their purpose of racing when they create a racetrack you can't run but one lane on.'' (Continued)