Japanese manufacturing company Bridgestone Corporation recently announced its 2025 motorsports programme, continuing to support both domestic and overseas motorsports that include top-level professional race series right down to grassroots amateur races.
The support will come in the form of reinforcing sustainable global motorsport as a “mobile laboratory”, connecting the refined technologies under extreme conditions to help the development of replacement car and motorcycle tyres.
Looking at top-level professional race series, Bridgestone’s support will come through supplying Bridgestone POTENZA tyres for SUPER GT car races in Japan as well as providing Bridgestone BATTLAX tyres for motorcycle races for All Japan Road Race Championship motorcycle races and Endurance World Championship (EWC), which is the world’s foremost series of endurance motorcycle races by Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM).
In North America, Bridgestone is the exclusive tyre supplier for the prestigious NTT INDYCAR® SERIES which includes the INDY500, where they will be providing the Firestone FIREHAWK tyres.
At the grassroot level, Bridgestone will continue to supply tyres to Super Taikyu Series races as the official tyre supplier. They will supply tyres for the All-Japan Gymkhana Championship and Mazda’s grassroots motorsport races as well as the TOYOTA GAZOO Racing GR86/BRZ Cup, a series that uses mass-produced tyres. They will also be suppling tyres for the TOYOTA GAZOO Racing Rally Challenge, which is a grassroots motorsport rally series for beginners. Bridgestone will continue to support the POTENZA Circuit Challenge, which is an open-participation event giving beginners the opportunity to take their first drive around a race circuit.
New for 2025 will be Bridgestone’s support for the KYOJO CUP as the official tyre supplier, which is a series of races for female drivers to help in the diversification of motorsport culture.
The company’s motorsport involvement around the world helps to advance and refine its technologies and brand power by pursuing the limits of maximum tyre performance under the extreme conditions of racing. At the same time, Bridgestone helps support the safety of all drivers and riders from professionals to amateurs and racing teams.
Showing their support for sustainable motorsport activities with primarily tyres equipped with “new premium” ENLITEN technology, Bridgestone is providing support for a carbon-neutral mobility society. With this in mind, the company will continue to sponsor the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge, which is a world-leading solar car race held in Australia for which the company has been the title sponsor since 2013.
Competitors will be supplied with tyres equipped with ENLITEN® technology that use recycled and renewable materials at higher ratio. Bridgestone will also continue its title sponsorship and support of the Bridgestone FIA ecoRally Cup, an international competition in which non-professional drivers compete with a focus on electricity efficiency using zero-emissions vehicles.
Vice President and Senior Officer, responsible for Motorsports tyre development and technology, Hiroshi Imai, commented:
“Bridgestone will accelerate sustainability of the entire value chain, where it “produces,” “uses,” and “renews” tyres to raw material with motorsport tyres as the starting point and spread it to the entire group with using races as a “Mobile Laboratory,” To this end, we will evolve our motorsport activities to the next stage with our new management structure leveraging the global motorsport insight and operational experience.”
For more information on Bridgestone, please visit: www.bridgestone.com.
Author Bio:
Simon Burrell is a UK-based motoring and travel journalist and editor, a member of the Guild of Motoring Writers and former saloon car racing driver.
Photographs courtesy of Bridgestone
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