Let's Go 400 Miles and Take a Break Every 10 Laps

There hasn't been this much embarrassment for a sanctioning body at Indianapolis Motor Speedway since the Formula One fiasco a few years ago. I'm watching the Sprint Cup Allstate 400 on TiVO and the tire situation is so bad they're throwing competition cautions every 10 laps or so in order to keep the guys from blowing tires and wrecking race cars. After 10 laps the tires are down to the cords - at least the ones that aren't blowing out and tearing up cars.

So far they've gone 98 laps and they've had 6 competition cautions along with 2 or 3 for wrecks. What a mess.

Mike Helton, NASCAR President, even came on the TV broadcast to explain what was going on. They're going to have to bring tires that were planned for Pocono and use those once they run out of the Indy tires. At $1,700 a set it gets pretty expensive to change tires every 10 laps in a 160 lap race. I bet some of the teams will be asking for rebates.

A bad day for NASCAR and a really bad day for Goodyear.

UPDATE: 121 laps, 7 competition cautions, 2 regular cautions. The teams also used about 10 sets of tires during practice and qualifying. They're looking at a tire bill for the weekend of a minimum of $34,000 per car.

UPDATE 2: 138 laps, 8 competition cautions, 2 regular cautions. Ka-ching!

UPDATE 3: 150 laps, 9 competition cautions, 2 regular cautions. Will anyone blow a tire and wreck in the last 10 laps?

UPDATE 4: Jimmy Johnson wins the last of the 10 lap heat races. It's mercifully finally over.