Bridgestone debuting sustainable Firestone Firehawk tires at Indy 500

INDIANAPOLIS —Bridgestone Americas Inc.'s pursuit of more sustainability is picking up speed with the Firestone Firehawk race tires designed for this year's running of the Indianapolis 500.

This year, the Nashville-based tire maker will produce more than 5,000 Firestone Firehawk IndyCar racing tires that incorporate two monomers — bio-styrene and butadiene — sourced from waste residue of palm oil processing. Both have been certified by the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) for supply-chain transparency and traceability.

Incorporating these two monomers allows Bridgestone to prove that achieving greater sustainability won't come at the expense of performance, the company said.

"The demands of racing also offer the ultimate challenge for our innovation," Cara Krstolic, Bridgestone Americas' executive director of race tire engineering and production, said.

"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."

Two years ago, Bridgestone took a big step forward with the Firestone Firehawk alternate race tires made for NTT IndyCar street course races, replacing 100% of the hevea natural rubber in the sidewalls with guayule rubber. Bridgestone has bet on guayule as an alternative to hevea, investing millions of dollars into the research, development and scaling up of the raw material.

Last year, the tire maker took another sustainable step forward through a partnership with Shell Chemicals that allowed for the use of bio-butadiene in its racing tires.

Sustainability may start with the tire's materials, but it doesn't end there. Bridgestone again is partnering with Penske Corp. to ensure that the tires — made at the company's racing tire factory in Akron — are transported to the track sustainably by electric trucks.

And all of those steps add up to big leaps forward, Krstolic said. They're proof that Bridgestone is serious about its sustainability aims.

"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," Krstolic said.