Bridgestone Americas (Bridgestone) announced Feb. 23 that major strides have been made during the offseason to incorporate more sustainable and bio-circular materials into the 2023 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season, highlighting the advancement of three key initiatives that will make the upcoming season the most sustainable to date for America’s premier open-wheel racing series. For the 2023 season, Bridgestone will supply more than 1,900 tires using a sidewall material made exclusively with rubber derived from the guayule woody desert shrub grown on the company’s farm in Eloy, Arizona. Bridgestone launched its guayule research initiative in 2012 when it broke ground on a guayule processing and research center in Mesa, Arizona. To date, Bridgestone has invested more than $100 million in its efforts to commercialize guayule. Bridgestone is also the recipient of multiple U.S. government research grants for guayule research and development, including from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (July 2017 and November 2022) and from the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (September 2021). Guayule is part of Bridgestone’s plan to achieve carbon neutrality and make tires from 100% sustainable materials by 2050. Bridgestone completes its farm-to-track sustainability initiative by manufacturing all Firestone Firehawk race tires at the newly ISCC PLUS certified ATPC in Akron, Ohio. Increasing the usage of the Firestone Firehawk race tire with guayule, the ISCC PLUS certification and the new sustainable monomer are examples of the values “Emotion,” “Ecology” and “Energy.”.

Follow MotorMouth on social media:

• 
• 
• 
•