What had we gained from competition with Michelin?

The FIA declared that Formula One would return to a single tyre supplier system from the 2008 season. At almost the same time, Michelin announced their retirement from F1, to happen at the end of the 2006 season. Hamashima remembers his reaction: "It's going to be lonely."

"Single supplier again? Having competition was certainly tough, and the pace of development never left us any slack. But, speaking as an engineer, that was the most fun. With a rival, we could focus all our efforts on simply making the cars faster. When we were competing against Michelin - our oldest and toughest rival - was the most interesting fight of all."

In fact, during the six years from 2001 to 2006 that we competed against Michelin, Bridgestone's capabilities evolved almost across the board. The challenge stimulated us on every front from engineering to logistics and management. Hamashima: "It was these six years that resulted in the new materials technology we would go on to use in our flagship road tyre, the ECOPIA."

Basically, the more you design a tyre to have more grip, the more easily it will wear. The goal of the racing tyre engineer is to reconcile these two opposites - to make a tyre that has both good grip and good resistance to wear. Competing to develop ever better racing tyres helped produce solutions for this problem.
It's the same with a tyre like the ECOPIA, designed to have low rolling resistance. Normally, improving the rolling resistance reduces performance in wet conditions. For use on regular roads, we want both high wet-weather performance and good rolling resistance. Competing in F1 dramatically honed our technical development and allowed us to achieve high level performance for both.

"Basic technology forged on the race track is now being used in our road tyres. The same thing happened with our environmental technologies like NanoPro-Tech?."

Competing with Michelin was indescribably tough. However, it was this struggle that drove our technology forward.

"In the face of real competition, we were forced to come up with fresh ideas and develop new technologies."

The tyre they called a masterpiece

"The tyres Bridgestone gave us for the final race of the 2006 season were so incredible that even today I remember the exact compound number. We had done poorly all that year, and in fact the best we did in that final race was to make third position in qualifying, but even so, for us at Toyota, those were the finest tyres we ever used."

In 2006, Pascal Vasselon was Senior General Manager Chassis for the Toyota F1 Team. He had previously also been F1 Director for Michelin, so for a man of his race experience to be so impressed with a tyre, it must be something really special. And it was - this tyre used the new construction we had been developing ever since 2004.

At the start of development in 2004, our goal was to improve the compound's heat resistance. Things didn't go so well at first - we were too focused on the heat problem that we let the performance in other areas slip. In fact it was so bad at one point that Luca Badoer, the Ferrari driver doing the testing, dismissed it in disgust: "This tyre is rubbish."

Our breakthrough came in the 2006 season. Suganuma, then Bridgestone F1 Team Technical Manager, remembers: "2006 really saw a dramatic change for us. We had been pressing ahead on improving the tread rigidity, and we had introduced new polymer materials into the rubber mix. That was because, although the 2006 construction generated extremely little heat, it was at the expense of reduced operability. To make up for that, we decided to try a new type of polymer in the rubber to improve the grip."

The changed behaviour of this new tyre became apparent during the pre-season tests. These tests were held in mid-winter, so the track surface was cold. Everyone was spinning their tyres. The drivers were reporting that the rear tyres slid and they lost control. Normally, that would cause us to reject that specification and try something else. Why didn't we? The drivers were also saying "But as soon as these tyres warm up, the traction they give is absolutely amazing."


From the lab test results, our engineers knew what these comments meant. That's why they had kept trying to persuade the teams to accept the new tyres. The test process had also been carefully planned. In the morning, while the track was cold, we increased the tyre pressures to help the rubber move and heat up more easily. Later in the day, after track temperatures had risen, we put the tyre pressures back down to normal.

Improved car hardware was also critical. Suganuma: "Now we could monitor tyre temperature as the car was running, and get a real-time appreciation of changes in heat distribution and pressure. At one point, a Ferrari engineer commented to me 'These new tyres are really running cool.' Until then, when a car took two or three high speed turns in succession, the tyres would reach temperatures of about 130° and become unstable for the next turn. Drivers had to compensate by delaying their acceleration. But our new tyres didn't get hot like this and the new data showed that it was possible to accelerate with optimum timing. This was a tremendous leap forward."

Bridgestone and all our teams were very excited by the new tyre and its performance, and looking forward to trying it out in the 2006 season. However, when the time came, the early races of the season were very disappointing. The problem lay in how the tyres were being used. When you have a really revolutionary new design, you have to completely readjust your approach in order to make the most of it. It became obvious that the cars would have to be modified to fully match the performance of the new tyres. And, as Suganuma says: "We realised that the drivers would have to adjust their driving techniques too."

We finally returned to form with a win by Michael Schumacher at the San Marino GP, on Ferrari's home turf. From then until the final race, the tyres lived up to Pascal Vasselon's description as "the finest tyres ever." The poor showing in the first part of the season prevented us from taking any titles that year, but even so, Bridgestone will always remember 2006 as the year our masterpiece debuted.

"The tyre Bridgestone brought to the 2006 Brazilian GP was like something in a dream, it was that good."

Vasselon's words summed up everything we at Bridgestone had hoped to achieve.

Remembering Super Aguri

For Japanese F1 fans, the 2006 season was something special. For the first time in the championship's history, an all-Japanese team was taking part. The Super Aguri F1 team, owned by former F1 race driver Aguri Suzuki, fielded cars powered by Honda and driven by Takuma Sato and Yuji Ide. And, of course, they ran on Bridgestone tyres.

Hamashima recalls how pleased he was with the appearance of Aguri Suzuki and his team. Bridgestone had very long and close ties with Suzuki - in fact, he had been our test driver during development in the run-up to our F1 racing debut.

In his earlier F1 career, Suzuki became the first Japanese driver to appear on a Formula One podium. Retiring from driving, he formed his own team to compete in the Formula Nippon and Super GT Championships. He would need all that considerable experience as a racing team owner to face the difficulties that troubled the Super Aguri F1 team throughout its short F1 history.

"We felt we had to get behind this Japanese team that was trying so hard. And they certainly were having problems. So we offered as much advice as we could, telling them for example how they could change their setup even more to get the best out of our tyres, and suggesting changes to their spring rates."

Hamashima especially remembers worrying about the Super Aguri team in the run-up to the Bahrain GP. They had done poorly in testing, and only had a single chassis ready when they arrived at the circuit. "I honestly doubted whether they would make it onto the grid."

Our engineer for the Super Aguri team was　Zen Yamashita, who had been assigned to the Bridgestone UK office the previous year. He also remembers the confusion and haste of that early period.

However, Suzuki's team kept plugging away and gradually built itself into a presence on the F1 scene. Yamashita remembers being most impressed by their performance at the 2006 Brazilian GP, where Takuma Sato went from 19th on the starting grid to finish 10th.

"It was a small team, which meant they could all work together very closely. I think that's why they started to do so much better in the second half of the season. At the team meetings, everyone listened intently to whatever I said - the whole team was determined to do whatever they could to improve their car's performance."

Super Aguri F1 would continue to improve, and in 2007 Takuma Sato won points in the Spanish and Canadian GPs. In 2008, however, financial difficulties forced this promising team to retire without completing their third season. Super Aguri's last F1 race would be the 2008 Spanish GP. Although the history of this F1 team wasn't long, it gained a permanent place in the hearts of Japanese race fans - you still often see people wearing Super Aguri shirts at racing events in Japan.

Michael Schumacher to retire

Schumacher made this announcement after the Italian GP. Yasukawa and Suganuma immediately notified Bridgestone HQ and gave the company's official response to the news.

Yasukawa: "On behalf of us all at Bridgestone Motorsport I would like to extend our congratulations first of all to Michael on winning today's Italian Grand Prix. However, we will be extremely sorry not to see Michael racing again after the end of this season. Michael is certainly one of the greatest racing drivers in history and we all feel privileged to have worked with him throughout his career, from karting to Formula One. Our wish now is to see him end his career as world champion and we shall do all we can to help him achieve this goal."

Suganuma: "There were a lot of mixed feelings after today's race. On the one hand we were delighted to see Michael win the Italian GP and we were pleased with the performance of the Bridgestone tyres but on the other hand we are all sorry to hear that Michael is retiring at the end of this season. We have had a very long relationship with him and he has played a large part in the development of and success of Bridgestone's tyres over the years, for which we thank him immensely. Looking at the race itself, which was very tough on the tyres due to the high track temperatures, we are pleased to see their strong and consistent performance."

The seven times world champion made his announcement in person at the press conference after his Italian GP win.

Mika Hakkinen had been the first top driver to work with Bridgestone after we entered F1, becoming a partner from 1998. We began working with Schumacher from 1999, our first year as sole supplier. Hamashima describes the differences between these two ace drivers.

"Hakkinen was really a very fast driver. However, during the long run tests he would drive his fastest in the first and last laps and in between he would drop into a more leisurely pace. Schumacher, on the other hand, simply drove all out on every lap. And nothing could persuade him to get out of his car before all the test time was used up. He was very closely involved in tyre development and always wanted to decide the specifications."

Schumacher was so keen that sometimes he would make requests that were almost impossible to meet. When we were in a close contest with Michelin, he would check the results after the end of testing on the Friday before the race, and often ask us to make up a completely new tyre. Of course what that meant was that the Tokyo production people had to work through the weekend without any break.

"But the result was usually that Schumacher won the race using the new tyres. For that reason the production staff never complained about being forced to work flat out over the weekend. Our engineers came to believe that ignoring Schumacher's advice meant that we would lose. So if Schumacher asked for something, there was no way out of it - we just had to do our best to give him what he wanted."

Hideki Komatsu agrees with Hamashima about the tenacity and passion that Schumacher poured into every race: "No other F1 driver put that amount of effort into winning races. It always amazed me how he was able to instantly understand our explanation of the compounds before each tyre test and how spot on his questions were."

Although 2006 brought down the curtain on Schumacher and Bridgestone's relationship, it would be revived by his return to F1 in 2010. Hamashima remembers how Schumacher's approach to driving had not changed at all. "Just as before, he poured everything he had into the race, watching his teammate's driving closely and examining all the data." Schumacher drove superbly again that season, but unfortunately the combination of his three-year absence and various problems matching cars and tyres in the end meant that neither Schumacher nor Bridgestone gained a title that year, our last in F1.

"From start to finish, our F1 tyres were Schumacher creations."

From Hamashima, this was the ultimate compliment.