Bridgestone Americas (Bridgestone) has produced a Firestone Firehawk Indy 500 race tire that incorporates two monomers sourced from the waste residue of palm oil processing. The bio-styrene and butadiene monomers included in this year’s race tires are certified by the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) for the transparency and traceability of sustainable raw materials throughout the supply chain, the company said.
“Our racing heritage with Firestone dates back more than 100 years to the very first Indy 500 in 1911, and we remain focused on helping sustain the sport we love for future generations,” said Cara Krstolic, executive director of race tire engineering and production for Bridgestone Americas. “The demands of racing also offer the ultimate challenge for our innovation. In proving the same premium performance can be delivered at this level through more sustainable materials and technologies, we can work to extend these efforts beyond motorsports into solutions being designed for the future of mobility.”
The Firestone Race Tire Engineering team and nearly 60 race tire production teammates will produce more than 5,000 Indy 500 race tires for use in practice, qualifying and competition at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) during the month of May, Bridgestone said.
Bridgestone said using the sustainably-sourced monomers in this year’s Firestone Firehawk Indy 500 race tires is the latest example of its efforts to prove and accelerate the use of sustainable materials and technologies through motorsports and the NTT IndyCar Series.
The company tells us all Firestone Firehawk race tires for the NTT IndyCar Series are manufactured at Bridgestone’s ISCC Plus-certified Advanced Tire Production Center (ATPC) in Akron, OH. The facility was awarded the certification in 2022 for its transparency and traceability of sustainable raw materials including bio, bio-circular and circular-based synthetic rubber.
Bridgestone is also again partnering with Penske Truck Leasing and IMS to transport all Firestone Firehawk Indy 500 tires to the track using electric-powered Freightliner eCascadia trucks.
Outside of the Indy 500, Bridgestone said it uses guayule-derived natural rubber in the sidewalls of the Firestone Firehawk alternate race tires made for NTT IndyCar Series street course races. Guayule is a desert shrub grown at Bridgestone’s research facility in Arizona that is being explored as a potential alternative source of natural rubber.
