A tense start to the season

On the eve of the opening round of the 2005 season in Melbourne, both Bridgestone and Michelin teams were feeling far more tense than normal.

"Would our tyres last the race?"

The new rule this year meant each car could only use one set of tyres during qualifying and in the race itself. No pitstop tyre changes were allowed.

Hamashima: "This meant we had to use tyres that were completely different from the sets in 2004."

The changes were so radical that we had to develop completely new tyres. And it was made worse by another problem - our development test schedule was running late.

Because we had been striving to win every round, our development of the 2004 tyres had continued right until the final stages of that season. Michelin on the other hand had shifted their development work early to focus on 2005, while we and Ferrari kept on improving the 2004 tyres up until the last minute. Ferrari only began testing for the 2005 season after the last race of 2004, in the off-season tests.

"The performance is fine, but will these tyres last from qualifying to the end of the race?" When Schumacher posed this question, Hamashima had no reply to give. After the test, we had to take the tyres back to the Tokyo Technical Centre to repeat the carcass durability tests. Until that was done, we couldn't confirm either their durability or safety. In fact, the Tokyo durability tests showed that some tyres couldn't be guaranteed to last for the required 400 km.

Our delay in starting tests for the 2005 season meant that our new tyre development was also late. We couldn't develop the tyre we wanted in time, so instead we made it our priority to at least ensure durability and safety. This much we achieved, but we didn't start the season with tyres that we were happy with and considered to be truly competitive.

Hamashima: "There was no other course. We had to use the tyres we did, because none of the others stood a chance of lasting to the end of the race. We were really tense and extremely worried going into the opening round."

In that Melbourne race, the only Bridgestone-shod car to place was Rubens Barrichello's Ferrari in the number two spot. Otherwise, only Michelin-equipped cars did well. A collision forced Michael Schumacher to retire on the 42nd lap.

A race unique in F1 history

"Yes, that was a pretty controversial race" says Yasukawa, looking back on the 2005 United States Grand Prix.

It began when Ralf Schumacher's Toyota crashed during Friday practice due to the failure of his left rear tyre on the final corner of the oval section of the Indianapolis circuit. When Michelin investigated, they found it was more than a simple puncture - the tyre had been unable to handle the speed and loading imposed on it by the uniquely fast conditions on this high-speed, banked corner. A standing wave had been caused that tore the shoulder open from inside. Even more worrying was that exactly the same problem had occurred on several of the other Michelin-equipped cars.

Michelin tried again with the same tyres for the qualifying session, but when this was over they reported to the FIA that they could not guarantee the safety of these tyres. They proposed to the FIA that a chicane could be installed before the bank to slow the cars down.

The FIA rejected Michelin's suggestion. Instead, they ruled that the Michelin-shod teams could either limit their speed for that corner, or change to a different tyre specification, subject to a penalty.

There was a great deal of confusion right up to the start of the race. Bernie Ecclestone came to see Hiroshi Yasukawa.
"Hiroshi, if the worst happens, can we go ahead with just the teams using your tyres?"

Naturally, Yasukawa agreed with this. A huge crowd of fans had travelled to Indianapolis for the event, and it was unthinkable not to put on a race for them. He headed straight to the paddock, and began explaining the situation to our teams. "Ferrari agreed on the spot."

Would the race go ahead, or not? In the paddock, the arguments raged until the last moment. When race time came, all teams lined up normally on the grid, and the formation lap proceeded as usual. And then came one of the strangest moments in F1 history. Instead of re-assembling on the starting grid, much of the field - all the teams using Michelin tyres - simply returned to their pits. Michelin had decided to forfeit this round rather than gamble on their tyre safety.

Safety first policy pays off

All the Michelin-shod cars had retired, leaving just six cars to start the race. The teams left were Ferrari, Jordan and Minardi. With no rival, you might expect that the Bridgestone staff would now watch the race without concern, but Hamashima and Suganuma tell a different story.

Hamashima: "We absolutely could not afford for a single tyre to fail. If that happened, we knew Michelin would pounce on it and use it to excuse their actions: 'Look - Bridgestone's tyres can't handle this track either.' I was praying for nothing to go wrong as I watched. I'd given strict instructions to our engineers with each team to keep a constant check on the tyre pressure sensors and immediately alert me about the smallest trouble."

Suganuma: "A puncture would make us look very bad indeed, so we made desperate efforts to avoid this. Indianapolis has a unique layout with a mixture of extremely fast and slow sections. That corner on the oval section puts a particularly big load on the tyres. We kept the closest watch throughout the race to prevent tyre pressures from falling too much."

Despite the tension and worry, they couldn't help but be thrilled by the battle that played out between Schumacher and Barrichello.

Hamashima: "I remember being awed by the sense of professionalism those two were showing. With so few cars competing, they knew they had to put on some kind of a contest to make it worthwhile for the fans. That was great, but it kept me on edge all the way through, desperately hoping that they wouldn't do anything that would put too much stress on the tyres."

In the whole of the 2005 season, this was the only race we would win. However, it was a result that held great meaning for us. That was because this race showed the correctness of the Bridgestone "safety first" policy.

Hamashima: "Normally, we don't do carcass durability tests at the track. But this year, due to the major change in the regulations, we brought testers to every race to confirm that the tyres chosen would be able to last the full 400 km."

"Once again we had proven, and quite dramatically too, that putting safety above everything else was the correct approach to follow."

A constant battle for our engineers too

In all our 14 years in Formula One, the years when we were competing against Michelin took the most out of our engineers. Ryouichi Fukutake is a typical example. After spending 2003 with BAR and 2004 with Sauber as a team engineer, he was our F1 test track engineer for the 2005 season.

"Through 2003 and 2004, I had to be with my teams at every single test and race. My job was to handle everything connected with the tyres - analysing each tyre we used, managing the tyre tests, and providing race support. In 2005, I was responsible for preparing Bridgestone's tyre tests. That meant I drew up the test menus and prepared the tyres for testing each time."

At that time, joint tyre tests were done between each race, and Ferrari also held its own tests every week. Fukutake attended virtually all the Ferrari tests: "Even though I was living in London, in 2005 I spent more than 80 nights in Italy."

These extremely busy engineers had to face all kinds of hardships. Coping with the foreign languages was a problem of course, but Fukutake had even more difficulty ensuring that he stayed healthy.

"I would regularly be at the circuit for the tests from eight in the morning till about midnight. Because I was working until the last minute before returning to my hotel, winding down for the night was a real problem. I even tried a quick beer before bed, but that wasn't enough to relax me. It was a constant battle to get enough sleep that whole year."

His biggest struggle was to get the production team in Japan to feel the same sense of urgency as the staff running the tests in Europe. "As the man on the spot, it was my duty to supply them with the best quality reports I could on our tests. I was never satisfied with my efforts, and it was made even worse for me by the hard fight we had all through 2005."

Hideki Komatsu was in charge of our joint development project with Ferrari. He remembers the unfailing enthusiasm and passion they devoted to winning.

"In 2005, we had been getting far fewer results than we had expected, and the development of new compounds was not going well. I guess they had just got exasperated by our lack of progress, but two Ferrari engineers suddenly arrived in Tokyo to give us a pep talk. They really lit a fire under us, and then immediately went back to Italy. Normally we always talked with Ferrari via video conference, so seeing them spending all that money and time to come and talk in person really made an impact on us. Later, at our final meeting before Michelin's retirement after 2006 ended the joint project, one of those engineers came to me and said 'It has been a great pleasure for us to work with such high level engineers.' I can't put into words how good that made me feel."

Working among foreign cultures and languages, with little rest from long days of continuous effort, what kept these engineers going was the goal that all of them prized so dearly - to prove that the tyres they had developed performed better than the opposition's tyres. In other words, to win races. Achieving that goal made everything worthwhile.