Firestone’s chief engineer and manager of race tire development, Dale Harrigle, says IndyCar qualifying will provide the first accurate reading of how the company’s softer compound tires will behave in Sunday’s race. IndyCar teams traditionally do not practice on the alternate compounds, saving them for qualifying, and as a result Firestone is as much in the dark as the teams, regarding the softer rubber’s behavior this weekend at Watkins Glen. Harrigle told Motorsport.com: “We brought reds [soft alternate compound tires] for the [mid-June] test but we’re already considerably faster than we were even then, so I honestly don’t know what performance advantage or wear rate we can...
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