Sundays NASCAR race at Indy suffered from an almost identical situation that Formula 1 faced 3 years ago. In 2005, all Michelin shod teams pulled in to the pits and refused to race only leaving 6 of the Bridgestone cars to complete the USGP.
On sunday, NASCAR had to throw yellow flag, “competition cautions” every 10 or so laps due to excessive tire wear. In effect, it made the race an afternoon of mini-sprints of 10 laps each because the Goodyear tires brought to the facility wouldn’t last longer than that. Many fans were upset by the debacle and as GoodYear recently tested there, i am having a hard time understanding how they didn’t have enough data to bring the right tire. Seems avoidable to me and I would be upset if I were a fan.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. took the opportunity to take a swipe at F1 when explaining that NASCAR did the best they could:
“The truth of the deal is that was the best show we could put on today, NASCAR did everything right,” he said. “It’s all we could do aside from loading up and going home and not running at all. Yeah, it wasn’t quite the race everybody expected, but shoot it was better than some of the races you’ve probably seen here.”
