Once again, Goodyears tire problems

They give American manufacturing quality a bad name pretty much every race. After 4-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson had tire problems at Daytona that saw his tires wear right through to the chord, Goodyear officials took 23 unused tires from the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series garages that showed signs of thin tread at Auto Club Speedway.

After Sprint Cup practice Friday, Goodyear officials saw three tires with a small patch of localized, rapid tread wear. They then asked Goodyear technicians in Akron, Ohio, to re-examine the X-rays of the 2,000 right-side tires that were brought to the track with a more thorough look at the area where those other tires had shown the thin tread, Goodyear global racing tire manager Stu Grant said Saturday. The X-rays are originally done so technicians can look for foreign particles or other abnormalities in the tires after they come off the production line.

Following the examinations Friday, the engineers saw possible signs of a similar problem in 19 tires sold to teams in the Cup garage and four sold to teams in the Nationwide garage this weekend. Goodyear asked that those tires be return and replaced them.

“I don’t have any explanation other than we have a localized area of light tread in some of the right-side tires," Grant said. “There’s something going on with the manufacturing. It’s got that light [tread] area that is a little off-center of the center of the tire.

“So just to be sure [we took them back]. … There’s nothing wrong with it except it’s a little thinner than it should be."