Earnhardt critical of Indy surface

Earnhardt has come out in defence of NASCAR and Goodyear after George told the that they wouldn't change anything on the track to make it less tough on tyres.

"The problem is solely theirs, and by that I mean it's theirs to figure out," George said. "(A solution) is not going to come with anything we do to the track. Figuring it out will only come with getting the car and tyre combination right, and that requires actually spending the time and effort to do something about it."

However Earnhardt believes the track surface at Indy is unique in terms of how it wears out tyres, given the diamond-grinding that was done to it to improve grip following its most recent repave back in 2004.

"I'll tell you this: Tony George said that they weren't changing the track and I don't blame them," Earnhardt said. "It's expensive to pave the track. But diamond-grinding the race track with the grooves does directly have an effect on tyre wear. Directly. And anyone who wants to say otherwise is just in denial. All right?

"So, with that said, obviously I wouldn't expect him to repave the race track even though they did diamond-grind it for no good reason. They just paved it. I wouldn't pave it either, or again.

"But what we're going to have to do, and I think that Indy is an isolated case, it's always this time of year that we see this. Whether we want to go or need to go or whatever, we're going to have to go down there and put two days of rubber on the race track one or two weeks prior to the race, just to fix that issue."

Earnhardt added that he doesn't believe a harder tyre would solve the wear issues they had to face last week, while insisting that the track surface is part of the problem. He also said that teams didn't choose to have an open test at Indy because there were other places that correlated more to the majority of tracks they race at during the season.

"I don't think changing the tyre is going to help it," he added. "A harder tyre might last 20 laps, but it didn't seem like the tyre got better as the race got better. The tyre wasn't putting rubber down; it was turning to dust and not laying on the race track and not merging with the asphalt.

"And you can't tell me that those grooves in the race track don't have a direct affect on tyre wear. That's crazy.

"The crew chiefs did vote on where to test. And the tracks that they picked to test under the limit of tests they were allowed to have are tracks that we needed to test, you know? It's not like we turned our back on Indy and just didn't want to go.

"We had some other things that were more important, other tracks that were more important that correlate with the new car and struggling with it."

When Formula One visited Indianapolis for the first time after the last repave was carried out, the Michelin teams ended up retiring from the US Grand Prix on the parade lap following repeated tyre failures during practice.