Goodyear: Newman's tyre punctured

Both Stewart Haas teammates were critical of Goodyear after the crash, blaming the tyre manufacturer for the incident. However, Goodyear's racing General Manager Stu Grant said that they did find a hole in what was left from Newman's tyre, which lead them to the conclusion that the tyre didn't fail due to any manufacturing or wear issues.

"We know that the tyre had 12 laps, the tyre shows no evidence of high wear, shows no evidence of any kind of blistering, it shows no evidence of any kind of abuse," Grant said. "The other thing we always check on is a fender rupture. We do see some of those at high-speed racetracks.

"There isn't enough left of the upper sidewall to be able to tell if there was any kind of fender rupture, but what we did see was a clear hole through the tread and both belts."

Newman was one of a number of drivers that had experienced some tyre-wear issues on Thursday during the Gatorade Duels. That led Goodyear to recall some tyres on Friday and not mounting any more from the same manufacturing batch as a precautionary measure.

Grant said that the tyre mounted on Newman's car when the incident happened didn't show the same issues as those they recalled on Friday.

"He had a severe wear issue," Grant added. "Part of the tread wore down to the belts on the right rear in the race on Thursday. The tread is intact on the tyre that failed today. Again, you can see a clear puncture through the tread and belt package. But the tread is still intact and it bears no resemblance to what happened on Thursday."

Stewart has been highly critical of Goodyear in the past but Grant says he understands his comments following Saturday's incident.

"Tony is a passionate race driver, and he is extremely frustrated right now with the unfortunate circumstances that he sees," Grant said. "So certainly he's frustrated. That's what you hear in his comments. It's not unusual to be very upset when you go through something like that as a race driver, as a race owner."

Newman will start Sunday's race with a car he hasn't run any laps with, while Tony Stewart was able to run a handful of laps on his back up during practice.