Firestone clocks up almost 40,000 Indy miles

Firestone Racing has revealed that, at the completion of 'Carburetion Day' yesterday at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a grand total of 15,561 laps (or 38,902.5 miles) had been run on its 'Firehawk' race tyres in practice and qualifying for the Indy 500. The 6000-plus tyres needed for the 2003 race are the first produced in Akron, OH, since Firestone returned to Indianapolis in 1995, all previous stock having been sourced from the Bridgestone/Firestone Technical Center in Tokyo

May 23, 2003, 9:06 AM

Firestone has about 40 engineers, technicians and service crew at the Brickyard, and the service crew will have completed 400 man-hours fitting tyres (at 4min per tyre) by the end of the race meeting. Each tyre is balanced to within 0.08oz.

At 230mph, says Firestone, the front tyres make 50 revolutions per second (3000rpm) and the rears 47.5 revolutions per second (2850rpm). The right-side tyres carry a maximum relative weight of 4300lb at the Speedway and the highest lateral load is at the apex of Turn 1.

If all the tyres used at the Speedway during the month of May 2003 were piled on top of each other (tread surfaces out), they would reach a height of 1.13 miles.