I’m sure a lot of you remember the Firestone/Ford fiasco back in 2000, which resulted in 6.5 million Wilderness A/T and ATX II tires being recalled following a disproportionate number of tread separations, leading to rollover wrecks in the flip-prone Explorer SUV. You might say that both brands were tainted by this ordeal, and that’d  probably be an understatement. But going on the theory that Jack In The Box is the safest place in the world to eat only after an e. coli outbreak, don’t you think Firestone would’ve way over-engineered its product following the disaster, as insurance against it ever happening again? Once bitten, right? I’m just wondering, because I’ve been shopping for new tires for my Eagle and have noticed that the ratings on Firestones generally tend to be pretty high. The user ratings for the Firestone Destination A/T’s I’m considering over at The Tire Rack are off the charts—you don’t generally see so many fields rated dark green (superior). It kind of leads me to believe that a little recall—or in Firestone’s case, a massive, precedent-setting recall—can be a good thing. How about you? Are you wary of manufacturers tainted by past recalls? Or do you figure their product must be safer than ever?

Unlike Formula 1, where teams construct their cars from the ground up, Indy Cars are all built on Dallara chassis and powered by 650 horsepower Honda V8s. Unsurprisingly, they also all run the same rubber,  Firestone Firehawks. The company actually mounts tires for all the teams, and with 33 cars competing, that means a lot of work for the guys below, who were rocking and rolling as I snapped this pic. According to James—he’s the dude on the right—the teams don’t mark the rims, but after a month of practices, the guys in the garage get to know who all the wheels belong to. "It’s little stuff, like what color and brand they are, and some of the crews clean them before they give them to us, and some of them don’t," he said. Given how important wheels and tires are to a team, I’d think there would be a more organized system to identify them, but what do I know?