Made from rubber sourced from a desert plant, it uses less water than other rubber processes.

Announced at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Earth Day, a new racing tire will debut in May during the Indy 500 Pit Stop Competition featuring a green band around the sidewall to indicate the shift from production utilizing rubber taken from trees to rubber harvested from the guayule shrub. The eco-friendly advancements are found with the need for fewer resources to create guayule-based tires.

“It all goes around to sustainability,” Cara Krstolic, the director of race tire engineering and manufacturing, and chief motorsports engineer for Bridgestone 

Americas, told Road & Track. “The hevea brasiliensis, the tree where we currently get our natural rubber, is renewable, but we look at the amount of water that goes into the manufacturing process along with the fact that there’s some geopolitical instability in areas where it’s grown. With guayule, it uses a lot less water to produce and it’s grown in the U.S. Southwest. Compared to other plants grown in the region like corn and alfalfa, it requires about half the water.”After the Indy 500 Pit Stop Competition debut, the green-banded guayule Firestone Racing tires will make their first appearance in an IndyCar race during August’s visit to Nashville for the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix street race where they will serve as the softer ‘alternate’ compound for teams to use. Those tires will be manufactured from guayule that’s grown and harvested by Firestone’s parent company.