Firestone had to do a little guessing for Laguna Seca race tires

Tires for IndyCar season finale

“The Firestone Race Tire Engineering team always enjoys the challenge of developing race tires for a new track. We collected important data for WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca at the February test, but we’ve also been looking at tire performance from similar tracks over the past 15 years to study how our tires and the track may have changed since the last time we raced there. Through track surface analysis we determined the surfaces at Laguna Seca are within range of the standard road courses in our series, but we also saw it has very unique differences with clay filling from water runoff and dust coverage from the wind – each of which can change grip levels significantly. After reviewing all the data, the team selected tires similar to what we ran at Portland this year but with increased durability to withstand Laguna Seca’s changing surfaces."

– Cara Adams, Chief Engineer, Bridgestone Americas Motorsports