Football
Associated Press 19y

Tires a big problem at Chicagoland

JOLIET, Ill. -- With temperatures in the 90s, this wasn't a
good day for tires.

Carl Edwards, Dave Blaney, Elliot Sadler and Michael Waltrip
blew out right-front tires Sunday during the USG Sheetrock 400 at
Chicagoland Speedway. Jimmie Johnson and Kevin Harvick pitted,
anticipating they were about to lose tires.

"We were just wearing the right rear tire out," Johnson said
after coming back from a lap down for a third-place finish. "Other
guys had trouble in practice. ... We must have been too aggressive
with our setup and overworked the right rear tire."

Harvick, the 14th-place finisher, dropped from fifth to 30th
when he pitted late.

Edwards blew the right-front tire on his Ford on the 79th lap,
sending him into the wall. Blaney's tire went on the 118th lap, and
Sadler's Ford hit the wall on the 164th of 267 laps on the 1½-mile
oval. Waltrip's blowout occurred on the 215th lap.

"I don't know if I ran over something or what happened, but by
the time I realized it going into turn one, it was too late and it
got up in the wall," said Blaney, who was in a Chevrolet.

Waltrip's tire also blew in the first turn.

"I hadn't seen any problems with the right front," he said.
"We'd been tearing up the right rear a little bit. ... We just
kept having a little bit of tire problems here and there. The left
front would be flat one time. The right rear would be blistered,
and then the right front blew out. So there is really no trend;
just a bad day."

Goodyear Tires product manager Rick Heinrich said the problem
appeared to be that the tires were too good.

"We don't really have the type of tire wear that we'd like to
have on the right side tires," he said. "Tire wear is one of the
important things that keeps a tire cool. Tire wear dissipates heat.
... Tire wear is actually very good. It's part of what helps keep a
tire cool. The blisters are caused by heat."

There were no injuries reported.

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^SORE LOSER:@ Tony Stewart finished fifth after starting from
the rear of the 43-car field and driving with a very sore body from
a crash during practice Friday.

"I had pain the whole race," Stewart said. "When you grow up
in the Midwest racing sprint cars and midgets, you race hurt and
you race with black eyes and you race with bloody eyes and you just
do what you've got to do and we got it done today."

Stewart has finished third, second, first and fifth in his last
four starts at Chicagoland.

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^EDWARDS STRUGGLING:@ The past three weeks haven't been fun for
Carl Edwards.

He has dropped from fourth in the Nextel Cup points standings to
12th, after finishing 39th Sunday.

A week earlier, he was 33rd in the Pepsi 400 at Daytona, and
that followed a 38th-place finish in Sonoma. The recent trouble
comes after a win at Pocono on June 12 and a fifth-place finish at
Michigan a week later.

"It was a real hard hit," said Edwards, who was running 37th
when his tire blew Sunday. "I think what might be going on here is
the tire might be a tick soft for the racetrack and the loads on
it. ... We had a race-winning car there today; that's frustrating
for me. It's just real frustrating. I really think we could've won
that race, so it's very frustrating."

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^NEW FORD:@ Ford teams will be racing the new Fusion next season
in NASCAR, according to a report Sunday in The Detroit News.

Ford has scheduled a press conference Thursday in Charlotte,
N.C., to announce the model that will replace the Taurus, which
will be dropped from production early next year. The Fusion is
scheduled to hit the sales floor this fall.

Fusion is a midsize model that will replace it on the sales
floor and, apparently, in NASCAR, where the Taurus has raced in the
stock car sport since 1998, when it replaced the Thunderbird.

Ford officials at the racetrack declined to comment.

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^SANDBERG'S SYMPATHY:@ Although he vowed not to "mess up the
name" of the track, former Cubs star Ryne Sandberg -- Sunday's
grand marshall -- expressed sympathy for Jeff Gordon, who called the
ballpark on Chicago's north side "Wrigley Stadium" and butchered
"Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during a game in late May.

"I feel bad for him," Sandberg, who will be inducted into
baseball's Hall of Fame in three weeks, said before the race.
"That's a tough thing that happened. But he's gotten a lot of
publicity over that -- not all good. (It was) an honest mistake that
happened, and I'm glad it wasn't me who said that."

Cubs fans, who booed Gordon, might not be thrilled with
Sandberg, either. Before telling the drivers to start their
engines, he said, "Here's to a World Series in Chicago." If that
happens, the games will probably be played on the South Side, where
the White Sox own baseball's best record. The Cubs are mired below
.500.

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^SPARK PLUGS:@ With temperatures in the low 90s, Carl Long
parked his car after 148 laps due to heat exhaustion. ... Grammy
winner Toni Braxton sang the national anthem.

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