NASCAR Phoenix notebook

Five drivers suffered a smilar tire failure during the NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Phoenix on Sunday and Goodyear reported that each of them were caused by melted beads due to brake heat.

Ryan Newman, Paul Menard, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Brad Keselowski and Kasey Kahne each made contact with the wall following their respective tire failures. Goodyear tweeted that melted beads caused the incidents in each instance.

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The bead is the part of the tire that tucks up inside the rim and holds it onto the wheel. It melts somewhat easily, and when the seal is broken, the air begins to leak out. As a result, the tire begins to lose air pressure and the driver will eventually lose control of his car if at speed.

Newman brought up the rear of the field, having brought up the first caution with teammate Menard 38, Stenhouse 37th, Keselowski 29th and Kahne 22nd.

Immediately after his crash, Stenhouse knew that brake heat was likely the culprit that ended his day.

"We were really tight, and I was having to use too much brake and I think we got the tires hot," Stenhouse said. "Once we did that, the right front gave out from having to use too much brake."

Temperatures hovered around the mid to upper 70s on Sunday, adding to the overall ambient temperatures, and likely contributing to the tire failures.

Ryan Blaney scores another top-10

Ryan Blaney continues to make strides during his debut full-time Sprint Cup season, completing the Good Sam 500 with a 10th-place finish, his second top-10 finish in a row, and moved up to 12th in points. The current Rookie of the Year leader started the race in 12th and was never scored worse than 18th. He was good in the clutch too, gaining two positions off the final restart in order to crack the top-10.

"It was a good day and a good job by everybody on this Motorcraft Quick Lane team and a top-10 car is all I could ask for," Blaney said after the race. "We fought really hard all day. We got a lot better throughout the day. We didn't start out that great and we just got better as we went along."

Blaney had worked his way up to 11th at the time of the final caution and crew chief Jeremy Bullins called his young driver down pit road for a four-time stop. However, Bullins made the last-second decision to change just two tires, giving him the track position needed to fight for a top 10.

In hindsight, it was the right call.

"The guys did a great job with two tires at the end," Blaney said. "I thought about staying out but we wouldn't have been on the first two rows so we had to come in to get two and I think it picked us up a spot."

In addition to leading the rookie standings, Blaney is also 12th in the championship standings, placing him in prime position to contend for a playoff berth come the summer months.

Earnhardt Jr. perseveres to a top-5 finish

If not for the final caution with six laps to go, Dale Earnhardt Jr. would likely have finished second to Kevin Harvick. Instead, he stayed out on old tires alongside the eventual winner, but faded to fifth over the final two green flag laps.

Where Harvick was able to beat and bang his way against Carl Edwards to his first victory of the season, Earnhardt wasn't as good on the used Goodyear rubber. With that said, he was also largely pleased with the result.

"I'm honestly kind of surprised we still finished as good as we did," Earnhardt said. "The guys with tires were just so much faster there. But I just got to thank (Greg) and the guys. They worked hard on this all weekend and we really made strides yesterday."

After a disappointing 26th-place qualifying effort on Friday, Earnhardt battled his way to fifth by lap 50. A caution lap 53 caught him up to the leaders and the most popular driver contended for the rest of the afternoon. He led 34 laps and cracked the top-10 of the championship standings with the result.