Speyer expanded on this aspect: "I make the analogy that it's like a person with high blood pressure. You look at them from the outside and you can't see anything wrong, but there's something wrong inside the body. Or like doing an autopsy on a body. We know from our analysis of our tyres after a race how healthy they are. Even when you see a tyre that was fine in the race, nobody but us knows how close it might have been."
Speyer says there have been occasions when
Bridgestone Firestone has been both lucky and good.
"We've had teams run tyres near the end of the race at much lower pressures than we were comfortable with and didn't have any problems," he related.
Another important part of Bridgestone Firestone's Stateside operation is its Performance Tyre Group service centre in Indianapolis, run by Steve and Barbara Butz. More than 60 people work for the Butzs at PTSG servicing Champ Car, IRL, Indy Pro Series, motorcycles, karts and drifting.
"We purposely located our Performance Tyre Service group right in Indianapolis," Speyer explained, "There, they were close to the large majority of the teams for better service rather than use Goodyear's old system, where they had distributors in each region of the country, but didn't have a service centre in Indy. We made a conscious decision to locate our warehousing and service group right there. It helped us develop our relationships with the teams. We tried to go the extra mile and extra step to service them at any point."
Added Mader: "I think the teams appreciate immensely the service that Steve and Barbara Butz provide. It's first-class. If somebody wants something done, they're going to find a way to get it done for them."
Bridgestone Firestone has put a lot of time and effort into minimising the moisture content of the air used to inflate their tyres.
