Latest on defective Indy Tires

Goodyear officials will most likely test at Indianapolis Motor Speedway before this year ends in an effort to remedy the tire problems that marred Sunday's Allstate 400 Sprint Cup race at the track. After Dale Earnhardt Jr., Mark Martin, Carl Edwards, Matt Kenseth and Juan Pablo Montoya each had tire problems early in the race, NASCAR officials opted to continue to use competition cautions to check the tire wear. The sanctioning body had announced prior to the race plans to throw the caution flag on lap 15, then continued the practice throughout the event, with the final competition caution coming on lap 150. Goodyear officials said that the combination of the Indy track surface and NASCAR's new car caused the tires to wear quickly and that they'll look into the problem.

"Obviously, the tread wear didn't improve as we thought it would for the first of the afternoon," Goodyear spokesman Greg Stucker said. "Actually we don't have the answer as far as why that didn't happen, so we've got to go back and look at that and try to figure out how to make it better." He noted this was the same compound that teams used in this event a year ago. Sunday's race marked the debut of NASCAR's new car at the 2.5-mile track, though it is the 20th series race featuring the model.

"This was the same compound we raced last year and the wear improved over the course of the day last year to the point where we could run the full stops," Stucker said. "That didn't happen today, so we need to understand why." He said Goodyear will work to assess the cause of the problems. "We're going to do our best to try to turn it around, we're going to talk with the race track, figure out what can we do about the race track, try to understand a little bit more, try to work with NASCAR and try to figure out what to expect from the car and the teams," he said.

"We're the tire supplier, we take it onto our shoulders, we've got to improve it, but … it's the package, so we need to understand the whole thing together and try to make it better." He pointed out that nobody was at fault for the problems, but that this is something the group will work diligently to resolve. Goodyear held a tire test at the track in April, but opted not to bring the tire from that session because of concerns about grip. Last year, the Cup drivers had a full-field test at the track, but the lack of that this season was not an issue, Stucker said.

"We had full-scale testing as far as we're concerned, I mean we had a tire test," he said. "We didn't have an open test like we did last year, certainly we didn't have as many cars on the race track as we did last year, so again that's a difference. But you try to use all that [in] your decisions." SceneDaily