A desert shrub. Used plastic procuring luggage. Do these sound like sources of supplies for race tires? Nicely, they’re going into a few of the race tires Firestone provides for IndyCar. Right here’s why.
Background Info
The Music Metropolis Grand Prix final weekend marked the one-year anniversary of incorporating pure rubber derived from the guayule plant into the sidewalls of the sequence’ alternate tires. Groups use the alternate tires once they want additional pace on highway programs and avenue circuits. Firestone gives the tires with guayule solely at its avenue circuits–St. Petersburg, Lengthy Seashore, Detroit, Toronto and Nashville.
Earlier than Firestone debuted the tire made with guayule at Nashville, groups examined it at Sebring Worldwide Raceway.
“The suggestions from the groups was that it was principally the identical tire,” says Firestone Chief Engineer Cara Krstolic. “Josef Newgarden stated, ‘It’s not an enormous deal as a result of I couldn’t inform any distinction.’ For us that’s an enormous deal.”
On the finish of the day, Firestone’s racing division has one major aim. “We don’t wish to sacrifice efficiency,” Cara says. “We wish to have sustainability, however not at the price of efficiency or sturdiness.”
Why Discover a New Supply of Pure Rubber?
The seek for new uncooked supplies for tires goes past simply checking off a hot-topic field for company stakeholders. Sustainability gives real-world advantages, and guayule exemplifies that.
First, guayule (aka Parthenium argentatum) is native to the Chihuahuan Desert. Firestone sources its guayule proper right here within the U.S., in Arizona.
Standard rubber comes from the Hevea brasiliensis plant. Whereas endemic to the Amazon rainforest, many of the world’s pure rubber comes from Southeast Asia. Being that far-off from the U.S. makes it extra susceptible to provide chain disruptions. Additionally, with the supply being nearer to the place the tires are produced and bought, it may theoretically scale back the price of tires.
Moreover, if a blight hit Hevea brasiliensis, it might have catastrophic outcomes. In truth, it was a blight native to South America that helped speed up the transfer to commercially produce the plant to Southeast Asia, the place that blight will not be discovered.
A bonus to rising guayule is that it requires much less water than many crops and will be grown in historically much less favorable areas for agriculture, such because the desert. Plus, all components of guayule can produce rubber, from roots up, in contrast to Hevea brasiliensis.
Why Not Use Guayule In every single place within the Tire?
Okay, so guayule looks as if a stable different to conventional pure rubber. Can it transcend the sidewall?
“Most racing [tire] treads don’t include any pure rubber,” says Cara. “They’re purely artificial. With an artificial, you possibly can give you plenty of totally different variations [of compounds for different characteristics]. You’ll be able to tune a tire with various kinds of artificial rubber. With any automobile, [tires] must be very heat-resistant. In the event you put a pure rubber in there, your compound goes to begin to degrade.”
Nonetheless, the sidewall nonetheless performs an vital function in a tire.
“The sidewall is a superb place to start out as a result of it’s an vital attribute of the tire,” Cara says. “It protects the carcass, the physique of the tire. It has warmth mitigation properties. It’s additionally in one of many extra secure areas of the tire, and we are able to take what we realized from there and apply it to different areas of the tire.”
So far as the tread, Firestone might need discovered a extra sustainable supply for its supplies.
Look no additional than what’s most likely in your kitchen now. You already know, these plastic luggage that pile up since you appear to at all times overlook to deliver reusable luggage whenever you buy groceries. Nicely, don’t really feel as responsible about that.
In partnership with Shell, Firestone included butadiene1 into the tires used for the 2023 Indianapolis 500. Butadiene1 is a monomer produced from hard-to-recycle used plastic that you simply discover in procuring luggage, stretch wrap and different versatile polymer packaging.
Why Experiment With New Supplies in IndyCar?
Racing gives the proper medium to check tires, in keeping with Cara.
“In any type of motorsport, you might be at all times pushing limits,” says Cara. “At Bridgestone [Firestone’s parent company], we’re redefining limits. Once we check tires, even earlier than they get to the race observe, we take a look at them, dissect them, run them on high-speed checks that go nicely above the place we might run them on the race observe. The explanation we do that’s that we wish to problem [the tires].”
There’s additionally another excuse that motorsports serves as a spot to experiment with new applied sciences.
“The great alternative we’ve in racing is we are able to use small portions,” Cara says. “In case you have an everyday manufacturing tire [for the street], for those who go to a kind of crops, they’re possibly making 30,000 tires a day. We make 30,000 tires a yr [for racing]. We will have a big effect with a small quantity in motorsports.”
What Does the Future Look Like?
Firestone Chief Engineer Cara Krstolic with a race tire utilizing supplies derived from guayule. Picture by J.A. Ackley
When are you able to anticipate guayule in race tires for tracks aside from the road circuits?
“The amount and scale-up is one thing we’re engaged on proper now,” says Cara. “Proper now, we’ve sufficient materials for avenue programs. Sooner or later we might do highway programs after which ovals.”
The race for different supplies to make tires is on, and that features these for racing.
“By 2050, the corporate introduced that we are going to have 100% renewable or round supplies in our tires,” Cara says. “This may embody all the portfolio [including race tires]. To get to the place you’re 100% sustainable, you must begin making steps.”
For Cara Krstolic, a former Formulation SAE participant, the search to develop a sustainable race tire is a private one, as it’s for a lot of others at Firestone.
“Most of us in IndyCar grew up racing our personal automobiles, constructing automobiles or [being involved in] something automotive,” says Cara. “We love racing. We wish to be certain that [racing] is round for a very long time. The one means we’re going to have the ability to do that’s to verify we do it sustainably.”