I think it's not the track, nor the car, nor a driver destroying prematurely the rubber.
It's the tyres.
It's not bull manure, nor a gentle cover up by the teams. It's true. You can get a bad set of tyres.
I'm pretty sure that (at least in a NASCAR team) every team has a tyre specialist. Part of his work is to put together the tyres in sets.
Why sets? Well, you'll see, this kind of racing tyres are made by hand. Actually racing tyres are built with a machine, but it has an operator, that run a limited batch. It's not like building 500.000 tyres, as JTom explains, so they're variable. Ergo, teams try to learn about the variability of tyres.
The team tyre specialist keeps a log in a huge worksheet (or maybe a program) where he records the measures he makes of things like circumference, weight, height, spring rate, codes, build date or width of tyres. He tries to put together tyre sets that, from previous experience, "go together" with the car or that "go with" the preferences of the driver.
Some times the particular set that the team specialist has to use doesn't fit the car or the driver, so the driver says he has a bad set of tyres. Normally, the driver or the specialist know in advance they are using one, that's what the records are for.
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