DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- Defending Daytona 500 champion Ryan Newman had remnants of his right-rear tire scattered all over his firesuit.
It was the only thing that was easily cleaned up before the Daytona 500.
Newman and teammate Tony Stewart wrecked during the final practice session Saturday, tearing up Stewart-Haas Racing's two cars before Sunday's season-opening race.
"It's just a bad situation," Newman said. "I don't really want to be in it. It's hard to talk about it."
Neither driver had trouble ripping Goodyear, though. Newman and Stewart criticized the manufacturer for bringing a faulty tire to Daytona International Speedway for the second consecutive year.
"Same stuff that we always talk about every year, failures Goodyear has," said Stewart, who frequently takes the tiremaker to task. "I think that's part of their marketing campaign -- the more we talk about it, the more press they get.
"But I think they forget it's supposed to be in a good way, not a bad way."
Tire blistering was a huge problem at Daytona last year. Goodyear thought it had a better handle of it this time around in the Car of Tomorrow, but then Newman, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Mark Martin had tire issues in Thursday's 150-mile qualifying races.
Goodyear recognized that portions of those tires were all manufactured on the same day, so it recalled at least eight tires for precautionary measure.
Stu Grant, general manager of worldwide racing for Goodyear, said Newman's latest tire problem was caused by track debris.
"The evidence would indicate that it would be a classic case of a clear punctured right rear," Grant said.
Newman felt a small vibration in his right rear after 12 laps, but before he could get off the track, the tire went flat and he started to spin between turns one and two. Stewart, his car owner, was trailing tightly and couldn't avoid running into him.
"The gold and blue down there is the cause of another deal," Stewart said. "I'm so tired of talking about Goodyear. It's ridiculous. I'm just over it."
Grant excused Stewart's remarks as frustration.
"Tony is a passionate race driver and he is extremely frustrated right now with the condition of the race car and the the unfortunate circumstances that you see," Grant said. "Certainly, he's frustrated and that's what you hear in his comments."
Both drivers were scrambling to get their backup cars ready. Stewart switched to the car he drove to a third-place finish in the exhibition Budweiser Shootout. By going to a backup, he will forfeit his fifth-place starting spot and start at the back of the 43-car field.
Newman needed his second backup of Speedweeks. He wrecked in his qualifying race Thursday and switched to his primary backup. He also blew an engine in practice Wednesday.
"I'm still confident we'll have a fast race car, but I just hate to have to go through all the adversity," Newman said.
The Stewart-Haas teams will spend the rest of Saturday trying to get their cars ready for the 500, tweaking the engine, chassis, suspension and even reworking some of the body work in hopes of getting it to closely resemble the ones they spent much of the week dialing in.
"We got a lot of work to do," Stewart said. "I'm ticked right now. I'm not happy. I'm not cordial. I'm not nice. I'm not anything right now and I shouldn't be. If it was because two guys wrecked, a driver's mistake, that's one thing. But a manufacturer that has the sole deal here, they don't have any competition and they can't give us something to keep us from having problems like this. I'm just amazed how everybody kisses their butts right now."
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