Castroneves talks Firestone then wins at Indy 500

INDIANAPOLIS — In 2015, Nabisco introduced Oreo Thins, 40-calorie cookies that are about 66% thinner than a regular Oreo.

One Oreo Thin is roughly the thickness of the "tread" on Firestone race tires used at the 105th running of the Indianapolis 500.

What else do they have in common? 

Well, as driver Helio Castroneves can tell you, they both go great with milk.

Mr. Castroneves won the 2021 Indy 500. He joins an elite class of racers to win the event four times — A.J. Foyt, Al Unser and Rick Mears. He described the win as a "dream come true," where his team was in sync and no one made a mistake. 

Mr. Castroneves, 46, only is racing a partial schedule this year, but said after the Indy win, “It’s not the end; it’s the beginning.”

Days before winning the Indy 500, the four-time Indy champion joined Cara Adams, director of race tire engineering and production for Bridgestone Americas Inc. and Firestone Racing, to talk about the race and Firestone Firehawk racing tires.

“Tires are extremely important,” said Mr. Castroneves, who also won the Indy 500 in 2001 (his first attempt), 2002 and 2009. “People don’t realize. They just think, 'Eh, it’s four corners on a car and that’s it.’ But they’re actually able to tell the drivers what the car is doing. They’re the ones in contact with the asphalt. That’s how you translate to the engineers and make the car better.

“When you’re on the road, it’s the same thing. You hear a noise, you hear a bump and people don’t know what’s going on. It’s the tire telling you something is not right. It’s the same thing in racing. But when you’re going 200 miles an hour, you have to be a little more sensitive to that.”

Firestone earned its first Indy 500 win at the inaugural race in 1911 and has served as the sole tire supplier of the NTT IndyCar Series for the last 22 years.

"For me, Firestone has been great because they've been there all of my career," Mr. Castroneves said. "It's great when you have something consistent. … It's easy to make something go fast for a few laps or a short period of time, but the consistency over the years is the hardest thing.

"That's why I'm so proud and honored to be representing and racing with Firestone Racing because they are the ones that help us to be safe, to be secure, to be fast and to achieve our goals too."

Here are four other things to know about the tires used in this week's race:

Firestone has three different Firehawk race tires, but only one is used at Indy.

Firestone primary race tires balance speed, cornering and durability and are the only ones used on oval tracks. They have a black sidewall and are used at every race on the IndyCar schedule.

Firestone alternate tires have a softer compound and offer better grip and higher speeds, but quicker wear. They have red sidewalls and are used on road and street tracks only.

Firestone rain tires have a grooved tread pattern that improves grip and control in wet conditions and helps prevent hydroplaning. IndyCar does not run oval races in wet conditions, so they're also used only on road and street tracks.

All Firehawk tires are designed and developed in Akron.

Firestone has a team of 40 expert tire builders based in Akron, who make each tire by hand. Bridgestone is building a state-of-the-art facility in Akron that will be the future home of Firestone race tire manufacturing. The Bridgestone Advanced Tire Production Center (ATPC) will be the first new tire plant built in Akron since World War II.

Track temperature matters.

Not only do temperatures vary by track — from triple-digit heat in Texas to 50-degree weather in Indianapolis — but they vary by time and turn. Temperatures can drop 30 degrees between Turns 2 and 4 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which affects how race tires grip the track surface and the speed at which the cars can travel.

"And conditions change throughout the day," Ms. Adams said. "What you test at 8 a.m. is not going to be the same thing as 2 p.m. when the temperature is out."

Drivers give a lot of feedback.

Firestone engineers bring about 5,000 tires to Indianapolis and the 2021 Indy 500 tires feature the same compound and construction as the 2019 Indy 500 tires, which won the Louis Schwitzer Award for engineering excellence in 2019.

The Firestone team is constantly asking drivers for feedback during the season to make sure they get the right tires for each race.

"We have a lot of different constructions," Ms. Adams said. "We might want to improve handling or we might want to improve one specific part in the corner because maybe during the race we had some driver say, 'Hey, you know what, as I go off the turn, my car is starting to understeer a little bit. We don't know if it's thermal but we just don't like the feeling.'

"So, we'll go back and develop a bunch of constructions and we'll test them virtually. Then we bring them here (to the track) and we have control tires that we run so we can baseline everything."

Ultimately, there needs to be a consensus among the drivers. For example, Mr. Castroneves might love a certain tire because it's really fast, but it won't be used during the race because another driver nixed it.

"It's always a balance," Ms. Adams said. "If we're going to test with a Honda, we need to make sure we test with a Chevy. We've tested things at the Speedway where we thought, 'This is going to be great. This is awesome.' We did a test a while ago where we increased the stagger and two drivers liked it and the other driver said, 'What are you trying to do to us?'"

It's a tricky balance, but when it comes to tires, hate is stronger than love, Ms. Adams said.

"If somebody really, really, really doesn't like how a tire handles on their car, we weigh that kind of heavily," she said. "So if you were to drive and everyone says, 'Yep, this tire is pretty good,' and Helio says, 'Ah, no, I really, really don't want you to put this on the car,' that's going to be a really heavy rating. We always look at stuff like that."