17/10/2005
NEWS STORY
Months after the Indianapolis debacle at Indianapolis, when seven teams withdrew from the United States Grand Prix, on the advice of tyre supplier Michelin, on safety grounds, NASCAR racers at Lowe's Motor Speedway at the weekend suffered an unbelievable number of failures, causing a number of yellow-flag periods, which, in turn, caused the event to over run.
"This is the biggest joke in racing I've ever seen,'' Kevin Harvick told reporters, after crashing out of the event. "It's terrible. Everybody is out there, knowing that at any moment their tyres are going to pop. It's pretty disgusting and pretty embarrassing for our sport.''
Things were so bad that at one stage, Tony Stewart radioed his pit crew and asked for a renewal of his life insurance policy.
It's now understood that the problem that caused the Goodyear tyres to suffer an inordinate number of failures is down to the track surface, which had recently been smoothed, using the same process used at Indianapolis.