The challenge of supplying all the teams
We had achieved our goal of defeating Goodyear before they retired from Formula One, but we were immediately faced with another set of challenges - to quickly adapt to the new demands of being the sole supplier, providing tyres for all teams.
"We soon realised how underprepared we were to supply all the tyres for every race. We had to scramble to increase our budget, get more people, more transporters - the list seemed endless. For a start, we had to rethink our whole production system, to be sure of providing each team with all the tyres they needed."
It took extreme efforts by Yasukawa to overcome all these problems in time. He also had to win the confidence of the teams so they would give us the cooperation we needed to do the job.
The first thing was to calculate how many sets of tyres we needed to make. Obviously, a minimum number of tyres was essential just to allow a race to be held. By Yasukawa's calculations, that number was 250 sets. This was met with instant protests from the teams: "That'll never be enough!" But Yasukawa wouldn't back down. He was basing his figure on the newly reduced number of test days. Another thing he did was to get the teams to pay a fee for tyre use, which solved the budgetary problem.
Eventually, Yasukawa built up the new tyre supply system we needed as sole provider.
On the management side, Horio had his own set of challenges:
"We started with four teams. The second year, this went up to six. And now we had to look after all eleven teams. We didn't have enough trucks to transport the tyres. And we would need twice the personnel. There weren't even enough parking spaces for the trucks, so we parked them in the grounds of our office. Then we started getting complaints that this was causing the land to subside. Well, that place didn't have enough meeting rooms either, so part way through the 1999 season I started searching for a new office."
Battling with the top teams
Our first experience of working with all teams came at the Suzuka Circuit, immediately after the 1998 season ended. After the Japanese Grand Prix, the teams remained in Japan to run tests with our tyres. This was the busiest time of all for Hamashima, but the thing that still sticks in his mind was how Michael Schumacher, a Bridgestone partner again after nine years, approached his work.
"He took everything extremely seriously, down to the last detail. The other teams were pretty casual about changing their settings, but not Michael. In his test runs, he would constantly be checking with us about the optimum tyre pressure to set. This may have been due to the tests being at Suzuka, where his team didn't have all the parts they usually would have had. I was most impressed, anyway. I saw how he looked at the whole picture and then determined precisely what needed to be done. This was what had made him such a formidable opponent for us. I remember thinking how good it was we were now on the same side."
As the 1999 season approached, our biggest concern was controlling how the teams used their tyres. Take tyre pressure, for instance. Bridgestone announced to the teams that safety should be the first priority when setting tyre pressure. However, some teams began using pressures lower than our recommended values in order to gain even a slightly better grip than their rivals. This worked because during cornering a lower pressure tyre deforms more, increasing the size of the contact patch. This tendency to push the limits was especially noticeable among the top teams. Hamashima commented "They are fighting to win, so I guess I can understand it, but…"
"We had set a safety margin, and now the teams were testing to see just how much of that margin they could cut. The trouble is, if you reduce tyre pressure too much you greatly increase the danger of bursting the tyres."
Ensuring all teams got equal treatment
The most difficult part of working in partnership with all the Formula One teams was convincing them that we were treating everyone exactly the same.
At that time tests were frequently performed during the season, and Ferrari also conducted its own tests on its private circuit. Hamashima remembers being troubled when Ferrari invited him to attend their private tests, since he was trying hard to build an impartial relationship with all the teams.
Working to bring the teams together like this was also a further education for us in the world of Formula One.
Horio comments: "When I compared McLaren with our new partner Ferrari, it was clear that McLaren were much better at creating an effective system, and on the marketing side. But Ferrari had made great progress. Working with all the teams, we could see where each excelled compared to the others: this one at marketing, that one at engineering, and so on. This feedback was enormously useful to us."
It cost Bridgestone a huge effort to construct a working relationship with all the F1 teams, but in return we received much valuable feedback.
Ensuring the fastest driver is the winner
Now that we were sole supplier and all teams were using Bridgestone tyres, interest was focused on which of the top teams would win. The favourites were Mika Hakkinen, last year's champion, and Michael Schumacher, driving for Ferrari. But the battle between these two was to end in a way that no-one was expecting.
By round eight in England, Hakkinen was leading Schumacher by 40 points to 32. At the end of the warm up lap, Schumacher told his team that he wasn't satisfied with the balance of the car. The mechanics frantically searched for the cause, but in the time available they weren't able to get the front suspension damper working perfectly.
Owing to this problem, Schumacher got off to a late start. But two cars had stalled on the grid, so the red flags came out - all drivers must return to the grid and restart the race. It was as he headed back round the track that tragedy struck for Schumacher. Approaching Stowe Corner at the end of Hangar Straight, his car refused to turn. The brakes had stopped working and, unable to decelerate, he crashed at speed into a tyre barrier. The car was so mangled that Schumacher, with one leg broken, had to be cut out of the wreckage. This injury would keep him off the track until the end of the year.
With Schumacher out of the game, it should have been a smooth run to the title for Hakkinen. Hamashima recalls what actually happened: "Schumacher's team mate Eddie Irvine made a tremendous effort and kept the championship in play until Schumacher returned to support him in the season's final two races. In the end, Hakkinen only just beat Irvine to take the title a second time. Personally, I think Hakkinen deserved his win."
Bridgestone's target for this first year as sole supplier had been to ensure that our tyres would not give any of the teams an unfair advantage over the rest. At the end of the year, we could be confident that we had succeeded with this policy of impartiality: the previous year Hakkinen had won on Bridgestone tyres. This year, Schumacher and Irvine had fought him all the way to a tight finish, even though they were now driving on Bridgestone for the first time.
As Michael Schumacher put it: "The Drivers' Championship should show who is the fastest driver.'
That was Bridgestone's goal too. We had created a level field, and the fastest driver won.
