Bridgestone Firestone doesn't want its used tyres getting thrown in the trash 'to collect water and breed mosquitos', according to Speyer.
"We also don't want them to get into the hands of our competitors, again, even to this day when we're a spec tyre," he said.
Until pulling out of Indycar and
Formula One racing in 1975, the old Firestone company had been a mainstay of the sport from the early days. The modern Bridgestone Firestone combine served its apprenticeship in American open-wheel racing by supplying tyres to the Indy Lights series under its Firestone brand, starting in 1992. When the decision was made to move up to CART, Bridgestone Firestone made a testing agreement with Patrick Racing, and the company spent all of 1994 testing and developing tyres with driver Scott Pruett.
"We probably had an advantage over Goodyear because all our equipment was new," Speyer remarked, "They were working with equipment that was twenty years old and, when we started the programme, we bought a lot of all-new equipment. When we were testing in 1994, we were hoping to get a handful of cars, but we never expected to have more than half the field."
Page Mader is Bridgestone Firestone's general manager of race tyre development in the United States. Mader has been with the company for 35 years and has worked in the racing division for all but six of those years. Mader recalls the cold shoulder his company received from CART's team owners when they first arrived on the scene.
"In 1994, after our test year, we made a presentation at Laguna Seca and basically, nobody came!" he grinned.
"And those who did, didn't understand or listen," Speyer added.
"We showed them our charts from testing at Indy, where we basically went faster and faster and faster through each run," Mader recalled, "That never happened with Goodyear! But at the time, nobody was interested."
