Added Speyer: "When we first signed Ganassi, he was in a much different light than he's viewed today. He's a powerhouse today but, in those days, he was just starting to come on and they started beating teams and drivers that nobody had expected them to beat."
Speyer says
Bridgestone Firestone refused to pay teams to run its tyres.
"We focused our efforts on product performance, not money," he commented, "A lot of teams wanted to be paid money but, over time, many of them came back to us to say we were right. What they wanted out of a tyre manufacturer was the best product. That philosophy was part of our success, I believe, because we were steadfast in that way. We wanted teams to be with us to help us develop the best product."
Mader recalls some hair-raising times in the early days.
"It's not like we haven't made mistakes," he acknowledged. "We made mistakes when we had to go up and apologise to teams we had worked with for a few years. I remember Greg Moore at Motegi one year saying 'you guys are so good, whatever's wrong this weekend, we'll get through it and we'll go to the next race and the rest of the season and not worry about it. We understand the concerns and that you guys made a mistake, but we're sticking with you'."
Moore finished that race in spectacular fashion by spinning backwards across the line after a rear tyre tread separated going down the backstretch.
A few years later, after Goodyear's departure, Bridgestone Firestone became the sole tyre supplier to both CART and IRL.
"We found ourselves working with two series, which we hadn't envisioned," Speyer said. "When we started, there was one series, CART, that happened to run at Indy in 1995. Then, all of a sudden, there were two series and, a few years later, we were the sole supplier to both of them. That ramp-up in terms of volume was a very significant task for our production facility in Akron and service-wise as well."
