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Chicago Tribune
10-07-2025
- Automotive
- Chicago Tribune
Crumb rubber: How NASCAR recycles the thousands of tires it used over the Chicago race weekend
During a weekend of hot, high-speed friction against the asphalt of the NASCAR Chicago Street Race course, thousands of tires burn out and wear down. After a few dozen laps, they lose their grip and become obsolete. But their life cycle doesn't end there. Each NASCAR race weekend, most of the 3,000 tires provided by Goodyear Racing become a fraction of the tens of thousands recycled annually by Liberty Tire Recycling. Before state laws prohibited it, used tires would be landfilled or stored in stockpiles, said Rick Heinrich, Goodyear's product manager for NASCAR. 'And at a certain point, that's got to be dealt with. We came to the realization that there had to be a new use for these tires, and that's where we're at today,' he said. 'When they're not usable anymore on the street, they're very suitable when they're turned into a different type of product to make other things, things that are all around us.' In 2024, a total of 215 million tires — including 92,588 from NASCAR — were recycled by Liberty, a company based in North Carolina that collects and processes racing, as well as auto and truck tires, from all across North America, according to spokesperson John Dowdy. The ideal would be to reuse a tire for the rest of its life, Dowdy said, which is possible when retailers resell gently used auto or truck tires for less than new ones. But, after being used, racing tires don't usually have any more life left in them, at least in their original form. At a Liberty facility in Concord, a suburb of Charlotte in North Carolina, NASCAR racing tires are shredded into quarter-sized chips that can be used as aggregate in roadbeds, landfill liners and landscaping products. 'It's a perfect example of sustainability,' Heinrich said. 'You're taking stuff that's worn out, you can't use it again for what it was originally built for, but it goes into something else. Nothing is wasted.' The shredded tires can also be used as a more efficient fuel to power kilns and boilers in concrete factories, electric plants and pulp and paper mills. However, while burning so-called tire-derived fuel is cleaner than using other fossil fuels, the process still releases some greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide. IMC Outdoor Living, a division of Liberty in the village of Godfrey in southwest Illinois, makes fully recycled rubber products out of tires for both residential and commercial landscaping. One of these products is rubber mulch, with a realistic texture that makes it look just like its wood counterpart, and which can be used to cover the ground in playgrounds and parks, making it safe for children to jump and land on. However, there are concerns that such products derived from tires can expose kids to heavy metals and other harmful chemicals, which can act as carcinogens or neurotoxins. In 2024, the company gave a second life to 4.7 billion pounds of rubber, Dowdy said. That material might otherwise have been disposed of illegally. These recycled products also eliminate the need to produce entirely new ones, which would entail deforestation. Processing synthetic rubber is an energy-intensive process that can cause pollution, too. 'What we ultimately want to do is, we want to replace virgin rubber in as many goods as we possibly can,' Dowdy said. Other Liberty recycling facilities grind up the tires into an even smaller end product: crumb rubber. Crumb rubber is at most 0.25 inches, and a single passenger car tire can produce some 10 to 12 pounds of the product. In one of its main uses, crumb rubber is mixed into asphalt to make it more durable and resistant to cracking. In September of last year, 2,800 end-of-life auto tires from Walmart were processed by Liberty and became part of a mix used to repave the parking lot of one of the chain retailer's stores, in Rolla, Missouri. 'We're keeping tires from going into and just clogging up landfills, or being dumped (in) nature and creating all this blight,' Dowdy said. 'We can actually create products that make things better.'
Chicago Tribune
06-07-2025
- Automotive
- Chicago Tribune
Behind the scenes, crew members keep NASCAR Chicago Street Race running smoothly
At the door of the DGM Racing trailer, Janice Kennett sat peacefully in the double shade of a tent and her Chevrolet baseball cap. She took advantage of a quiet moment between her caretaker duties for the racing team: Kennett washes all the drivers' suits and ensures the team is stocked with cold drinks and snacks. She and her husband, Gary — who drives the truck for the team — have been with DGM Racing for four years. They drive to all 33 race weekends from their home in Lake Wales, Florida, where Kennett uses her own washing machine to do the team's laundry. 'People work better when they're taken care of,' Kennett said. Behind the many wire fences surrounding NASCAR's fan area, dozens of trailers and hauling trucks are lined up like oversized dominoes. Back here, everyone wears long black pants or heavy suits, protecting themselves from the gasoline and asphalt that makes racing dangerous for the large crews that come with every driver. This is the sweaty world of NASCAR, where mechanics lie belly-up beneath racecars, their hands covered in grime. It's not glamorous or easy, but this work is the lifeblood of American racing. Late Saturday morning, water poured out from under the hood of Joey Gase Motorsports' No. 53 car, driven by Sage Karam. Five team members, in green and black racing shirts, crowded around the vehicle. Sweat ran down everyone's foreheads as one mechanic crawled under the car, and two others set up a tent to shield them from the sun as they worked. Mechanics often perform this kind of maintenance. When drivers do their practice loops at the beginning of a race weekend, their cars accrue all sorts of damage. The JR Motorsports team had at least 12 people working on one of its cars, while the Joey Gase group did its repairs just a few trailers away. Behind another fence, Sunoco employees distributed dozens of gas tanks. To their right, technicians from Goodyear Racing carefully studied piles of tires, which were stacked up all over the NASCAR area. Getting tires to cars is one of the more complex aspects of a race. , the Goodyear Racing product manager for NASCAR, said that his company provides roughly 3,000 tires to cars every NASCAR race weekend. Cup Series vehicles get a maximum of seven pairs of tires for each race. XFinity Series cars get a maximum of six pairs. Most teams hold onto a pair or two of 'scuffs' — used tires — as backups. Almost all the tires used in a race weekend are immediately recycled into rubber dust. Heinrich and his team are usually the first to arrive at a race site. They have to unload and organize thousands of tires, and then collect data on every tire so that small manufacturing discrepancies can be accounted for and explained to teams, which receive tires at random. 'You really can't help but to have an appreciation, or be somewhat of a fan of racing, when you work for Goodyear,' Heinrich said, 'because, really, the core of the automotive business is racing.' If it rains, all those numbers change, and teams are allotted an additional four sets of wet-weather tires. They're necessary to prevent slippage when it rains, but will slow down a driver once the track dries up again. The Chicago Street Race, with its imperfect asphalt and lines of yellow and white paint for average city drivers, offers an unusual track for Goodyear tires. That aspect, however, is out of Heinrich's hands. 'That's why this place is so special,' Heinrich said. 'It's just different. It's not a purpose-built racetrack.' The five-person crew at Cope Family Racing would agree that this weekend is different. Usually, the team has a trailer with all of its tools right behind the pit box. But because the pit road area is so limited, in the middle of downtown Chicago, the crew had to park elsewhere and lug all the tools to the pit road. Bradley Carson is one of three mechanics on the Cope team, which is the smallest as well as one of the newest in the series, not that it has limited XFinity driver Thomas Annunziata, who qualified in the middle of the pack for the Chicago Street Race. Saturday afternoon, as the temperature climbed into the mid-80s, an oil-caked Carson was sitting on a tire in the shade of his team's pit box. 'I'm exhausted,' he said. He had every right to be. Carson, 62, who lives in Morrisville, North Carolina, and the two other mechanics on the team, rebuild Annunziata's car nearly every week and after a racing weekend, it requires a complete renewal. For Carson, a 19-hour day, four times a week, is nothing unusual. He admitted that the job takes a lot. But he wouldn't give it up. 'People are doing this because they want to do this,' Carson said. He got into motorsports as a 16-year-old not-always-legal drag racer in Los Angeles. Carson fell in love with 'the thrill' of being around cars and stuck with it. 'You build something and it comes to life,' he said. 'It's a calling, in a sense … something that drives inside of you.'
Forbes
20-06-2025
- Automotive
- Forbes
100 Years Of The Goodyear Blimp – How A Unique Branding Tool Has Stood The Test Of Time
At the Le Mans 24 hour race, the Goodyear blimp was a familiar feature in the sky This year marks 100 years since the first Goodyear blimp took to the skies. The brand is, of course, most well known for its tire ranges but its branded blimp has become a staple at motorsport events over the past century. Underlining its importance for the brand, it was a near permanent fixture above the 24 Hours of Le Mans last weekend. After featuring at Le Mans for the first time in 1973, Goodyear brought its only Europe-based blimp to the iconic endurance event. Luca Andreoni, Senior Manager Marketing Communications Strategy at Goodyear said: 'The Goodyear blimp is a historical icon and it's a great branding tool both internally and for motorsports enthusiasts because it goes beyond what we normally do.' The blimp is as long as two and a half blue whales While Andreoni admits you could ask what the connection between the tire brand and the blimp is, he explains it's part of the company's historical DNA and global presence. He added: 'The blimp is an icon of innovation as well, even if it's obsolete in a way, it projects what we have been and what we want to be.' This historical reflection on the significance of the technology at the time is not to be underestimated. Although the interior and area where the pilot and copilot sit looks super high tech, it's easy to imagine how mind blowing this form of flying would have been 100 years ago. Huge technological breakthroughs are often overlooked as soon as they are surpassed by the next generation of innovations but it's great to see the blimp being preserved in this way. What Is It Like Inside The Goodyear Blimp? Up front with the pilot and copilot In comparison to the blimp's huge 75m long upper structure, the passenger compartment is much smaller with room for just 14 passengers and two pilots. One of the strangest parts is that the blimp has opening windows. There's no chance you could fall out of them but it still feels surreal to stand right next to an open window when you're 1000ft in the air. Despite its size, the blimp is impressively agile. It climbs to cruising height quickly and makes tighter turns than you'd expect. Although there's nothing else in the sky like it, bizarrely, the blimp feels most closely related to a helicopter. How Does The Goodyear Blimp Fly? Although the blimp is huge, it doesn't need many crew to operate The blimp's upper section is filled with helium to help it float. In the past airships like Zeppelins and blimps used hydrogen but for obvious fiery reasons, helium is now the preferred option. Helium alone is not enough to move the airship though, Goodyear's blimps are equipped with three four-cylinder 200 hp engines, one on either side and one at the rear. These power propellers which are used to direct the blimp and help it to gain altitude. Typically, a blimp will fly at around 1000ft, no higher than the top of the Eiffel Tower but it can reach up to 10,000ft. Since the cabin is not pressurised, this is the maximum altitude it would be able to reach. When it comes to max speed, it's not particularly quick at 78mph but it makes for a nice cruising pace with plenty of time to look down on iconic tracks like Le Mans. Looking down at the track from the blimp Thanks to its design, the blimp can fly for a maximum of 22 hours, so no wonder it's ideally suited to endurance race appearances. Although the airship is as long as two and a half blue whales, just three ground crew can help the pilot to land and secure the blimp. How Many Goodyear Blimps Exist? Goodyear commissioned four blimp replicas as part of its global branding campaigns. Three are permanently based in America while the other is operated by Zeppelin in Europe. The blimp has become an iconic symbol for Goodyear Years on from the blimp's first Le Mans appearance, both motorsports and strong branding remain important messages for Goodyear. Andreoni said: 'Motorsports has been part of our DNA since the very beginning but it's more than that, it's about how we make the connection between the business and motorsports. There's a lot of effort put into that. Just for Le Mans, we have 8,000 tires and 41 out of 60 cars competing with our tires. 'Endurance racing is the perfect platform to demonstrate the fact that you can be consistent throughout the entire life cycle of the product. In real life, as a driver, you need a tire that is safe and performs from the very first mile until the end. We are trying to shape the products of the future by always pushing the boundaries. Racing serves that purpose and helps us to be at the forefront of innovation.'
