{"id":59541,"date":"2019-02-08T09:10:09","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T17:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=59541"},"modified":"2019-02-08T09:10:09","modified_gmt":"2019-02-08T17:10:09","slug":"bridgestone-announces-partnership-plant-opening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/bridgestone-announces-partnership-plant-opening\/","title":{"rendered":"Bridgestone Announces Partnership, Plant Opening"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bridgestone
Image courtesy Bridgestone Americas, Inc.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bridgestone\u2019s Firestone brand is going to be the exclusive tire supplier and Official Tire for the NTT IndyCar\u00ae Series for at least another five years as Bridgestone and INDYCAR announce that they\u2019ve signed an extension to their contract.<\/p>\n

\"Bridgestone
Image courtesy IndyCar<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The contract extension maintains Firestone as the Official Tire of the Indianapolis 500\u00ae. Bridgestone also announced that they will build a new plant to support this contract extension. The company has been the exclusive tire supplier for IndyCar since 1996.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

New High-Tech Manufacturing Facility to Be Built Near Current Akron, Ohio Research Center<\/h4>\n
\"Bridgestone
Image courtesy Bridgestone Americas<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bridgestone already has a technical center located in Akron, Ohio. Bridgestone announced that they will build a new plant near this facility in conjunction with the contract extension announcement. The plant will replace the current race-tire unit occupying the original Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. Plant One building. The new contract enables Firestone to remain the exclusive tire to the IndyCar\u00ae Series through the 2025 season.<\/p>\n

The new plant, the Bridgestone Advanced Tire Production Facility, will be a cutting-edge facility co-located next to the existing tire-testing facility, only a few blocks to the east of the Bridgestone-Firestone Americas Technical Center that\u2019s been in South Akron for seven years. Bridgestone Americas Motorsports Chief Engineer says that production could start at the facility as early as 2020, but that the project is scheduled to be completed in about four years.<\/p>\n

\"Bridgestone
Image courtesy Bridgestone Americas<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The size of the investment in the facility hasn\u2019t yet been announced by the company, though they did say that the plant \u201cwould accommodate 50 workers now employed in race tire manufacturing” and that employment there could grow along with increased prototype tire production. The race tire unit occupies 100,000 square feet of the old Firestone factory, although the company could move production elsewhere due to their current lease with the city expiring this year.<\/p>\n

Chief Technology Officer Nizar Trigui told reporters that their decision reflects the company\u2019s Akron heritage. He said: \u201cThe Akron community and race tire development have each played significant roles in our company\u2019s past, and they will continue to drive innovation for us in the future.”<\/p>\n

President of IndyCar Jay Frye praised Bridgestone for what he called a \u201chuge investment\u201d in racing, telling reporters, \u201cThis extension reflects Firestone\u2019s commitment to helping to shape IndyCar\u2019s paddock wide five year plan.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bridgestone\u2019s Firestone brand is going to be the exclusive tire supplier and Official Tire for the NTT IndyCar\u00ae Series for at least another five years.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":59545,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3470,3699,5029],"tags":[6641,712,1074,41,636,1632,3007,1371],"class_list":["post-59541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-other-racing","category-racing","tag-bridgestone-americas","tag-indycar","tag-mike-aguilar","tag-news","tag-partnerships","tag-racing","tag-racing-tires","tag-tires"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/indyExtension_PressRelease-min.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-ful","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59546,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59541\/revisions\/59546"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}