This seems like (clearly?) bad journalism. RFID tags on their own are for sure not taking active sensor readings, that'd be left for something closer to TPMS style systems.
It seems there are RFID tags that provide sensing functions. I didn't do a deep dive, here's the first thing I found. [1] They sense temperature, pressure, and other parameters. I wouldn't be surprised if something like this is used by tire makers.
There's a small battery-powered device mounted inside the tire, attached to the valve stem.
In regular passenger vehicles, it's usually woken up regularly by a signal from the car. It takes sensor readings, and transmits them back to the car (using that region's unlicensed UHF bands).
I imagine Formula teams may have need for greater frequency of sensor data, so there could be some variations here, but that's broadly how it works. In a passenger car, the battery outlives the tire.
So this system gets abused in sports. I wonder if there are applications in the real world (like tracking of movement of (individual) cars).
It's already done. When you drive into a parking lot, or go through a restaurant drive-through, your tires may already be scanned and your information sold.
It doesn't take much to corollate a person using the same credit card more than once at a store with the transmitted IDs of their tires in the parking lot, and then follow that person, via their tires, from place to place as they shop, do errands, visit an abortion clinic, etc.
Active RFID tags with integrated sensors are becoming more common.
Electronic sensors of various sorts have become low enough power to enable embedding a very small battery with sensors and RFID transmitter. These can log readings every second or few for a few _years_.
[1] https://www.atlasrfidstore.com/sensor-rfid-tags/