Tire issues leave Gibbs and Goodyear searching for answers

Edwards’s race went without incident in regards to tires and he held off Dale Earnhardt Jr. to secure his first Sprint Cup Series win of the season.

But the day did not go nearly as well for his teammates Kyle Busch, Matt Kenseth and Denny Hamlin. All three experienced blown right-front tires in the race, and in the case of Busch and Kenseth, each had the issues occur twice.

Hamlin finished 20th, Kenseth 36th and Busch 38th.

Busch and Hamlin also had other issues in the race that contributed to their poor finishes but the tire issue stuck out as it was confined to one organization.

“Everything we’ve seen has been from the Gibbs organization. The tires off (Kenseth) and (Hamlin) cars were very similar. (Busch’s) looked a little bit different, but again it was the same right-front position,” said Greg Stucker, Goodyear’s director of racing.

“We talked to the teams to try to learn as much as we could here. We’ll take the tires back to the lab and get a thorough analysis. We’ll try to solve the problem together.”

During the course of the race, explanations for the tire failures ranged from melted beads from excessive brake heat to punctures from debris.

Stucker said, however, the commonality of the same tire from the same organization through those diagnosis in doubt.

“After the second one (Busch) had, we’re just going to throw it in question,” he said. “It makes us question whether his first one was a melted bead.”

Edwards was well aware of his teammates’ troubles during the race and it left him feeling admittedly “nervous.”

“I have the best teammates in the business, and if they can have trouble, I can surely have trouble,” he said. “I was nervous about it, but Dave (Rogers, crew chief) did a good job of talking to me about how hard we were pushing the tires and what we had going on there, so I felt pretty comfortable.”

The issue also proved confusing to his teammates.

“We just keep blowing right front tires, I don’t know why,” Kenseth said. “The first one was a little confusing, I knew I blew a right front, but I thought they were telling me it wasn’t flat so I was a little confused. The (second) one just blew a lot earlier and the angle was a lot worse hitting the wall.”

Said Busch after he wrecked out of the race: “I’m not sure what started it, but we were a little snug early on in the first run of the race. As the car would run more and more laps it would get tighter and tighter, that’s the weirdest thing that I’ve felt all day and all weekend we haven’t had that problem. Not sure what happened.”