“My comments last week were made in frustration and made to get Goodyear's attention,” he continued. “But what I overlooked when I made those comments was that they affected people who had nothing to do with the racing programme. I want to apologise to the people who work in the factories and the union workers at Goodyear.
We realise that they're working hard just like everybody else, and we realise that Goodyear as a whole works hard too. But our comments last week were not meant to offend those people, because they're not the ones making the decisions about the racing tyres we use here at the track.
“A lot of the people that Goodyear brings to the track aren't necessarily engineers and they don't make the decisions on what compounds and constructions (of tyres) that we'll race on, but they're the people who are here as early as the teams are and leave as late as the teams do because they're here mounting and dismounting tyres and unloading and loading trucks. A lot of those people have become friends over the years, and that's another group of people we didn't mean to offend with our comments.
“Our comments were strong to get somebody's attention high up in corporate at Goodyear. It wasn't meant to offend anyone else.”
Grant, the General Manager of Goodyear's worldwide racing department, was also satisfied with the meeting and felt that the company and the Sprint Cup drivers would be able to work more closely in the future.
“I was very pleased with the meeting that I had with Tony,” said Grant. “It was an excellent meeting. It was constructive. It was extremely worthwhile to sit down and have a discussion with him. Tony was able to express his concerns and I listened to his concerns. I was able to explain our process, and we both talked about how moving forward, we can improve the process of developing tyres for NASCAR Sprint Cup racing together.”
![Tony Stewart - Home Depot Chevrolet [pic credit: image.net]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/300248.jpg)
