Overhauling the organisation to meet new needs

The FIA had announced that F1 would revert to a single tyre supplier from 2008. In fact, Michelin retired a year before this, so by 2007 Bridgestone was once again the only tyre supplier. Hamashima recalls how, after a break of six years, every aspect of racing had moved to a much higher level.

"Our simulation technology had advanced enormously, but the technology of all the teams was also far more advanced than it had been seven years before. The teams now demanded much higher levels of data and tyres from us, and we had to supply a much higher quality service. That was the major difference this time."

In those seven years, Formula One racing had evolved in a great many ways. This required us to reform our organisation and make it even stronger than during our years of competition with Michelin. That went both for our staff in Japan and the engineers working at the track. Hamashima: "As sole supplier from 2007, it was a big issue for us to ensure we provided a service to all the teams that was fair and of equally high quality."

It also became important to strengthen the links between our team at the race tracks and the development staff back in Japan.

"Until now, our race team had two sections, race operations staff and R&D staff. However, now that we were sole supplier again, it would not be possible to handle research and development on site. All our efforts at the track had to be devoted to ensuring impartial service to all the teams. So the research and development side moved to the Technical Centre in Tokyo."

We reconstructed our organisation, splitting it between the front-line team at the racetrack and support staff back in Japan. This was an essential factor in operating fairly as sole supplier.

Fairness takes priority over performance

Pascal Vasselon of the Toyota F1 team had praised our 2006 design as the tyre every team dreamed of using. But for the 2007 season, Bridgestone put this masterpiece to one side and developed a totally new tyre.

Hamashima recalls teams asking him in astonishment: "What? You're not going to give us that great tyre we just tried?"

For this season we prepared one completely new construction and four types of compound: hard, medium, soft and super soft. The tyre size was the same as the previous year but otherwise this was a completely new design.

We felt we had to take this approach in order to be impartial toward all teams.

Many of the technologies we had used in the 2006 tyre we were planning to use in future commercial road tyres as well. For that reason also, Hamashima and the engineering team really wanted to race with this tyre. However we couldn't do that and at the same time ensure impartial treatment for all.

"If we supplied that tyre, the teams that used it in 2006 would have had an unfair advantage."

We completely changed our approach so that the previous Michelin teams wouldn't feel they were suffering from unfair treatment. However, they had another complaint: "The Michelin tyres had better grip."

Our engineers did their best to answer: "What you're seeing isn't a difference between Michelin and Bridgestone, it's the result of the race now being single tyre supplier." In previous years, tyre designs had been ultra-competitive - the two tyre manufacturers were engaged in a constant close fight. Now with only a single supplier, tyre performance would naturally feel different.

Season results prove our approach is right

For the 2007 season, we were supplying all the teams, and this year there were 11 of them. Many of the cars had very different characteristics, and each team had its own special requests for us. For example Ferrari, whose cars are known for being easy on tyres, asked for softer compounds. Other teams whose cars placed more demands on their tyres requested more hardness. However, our stance was that all teams should use the same specs, ones that we had determined on the basis of fairness for all.

Our policy showed obvious results right from the start of the season. The winner of the opening round in Australia was Kimi Raikkonen, who had been driving on Michelins in 2006 and only switched to Ferrari this year. In the second round in Malaysia, the winner was McLaren's Fernando Alonso, also a former Michelin user. The fastest lap recorded in that race was by another McLaren driver, Lewis Hamilton.

Everyone could plainly see that last year's Bridgestone users had no unfair advantage over the former Michelin users. The close contest between Ferrari and McLaren continued right until the end of the season, and Hamashima was extremely pleased with this outcome.

"The best thing about 2007 was that there were several candidates for the title right until the final race. McLaren (either Hamilton or Alonso) and Ferrari (Raikkonen or Massa) had an equal chance of victory. In the end Raikkonen took the championship by a single point. It was clear proof of the success of our policy of treating all teams impartially."

With all teams and all drivers using the same tyres, we had ensured a level playing field. The fight for the title was close right until the end, making this a really exciting season for the fans. We ended the year highly pleased that our policy decision had proven so magnificently successful.

One make of tyre generates new race strategies

A notable feature this year was that we saw far more vigorous overtaking, most spectacularly by Takuma Sato in the Canadian GP (sixth round).

Sato was driving for the Super Aguri team. The previous year they announced their entry to F1 just before the opening race and faced difficulties throughout the season, including financial problems. Even so, they finished 10th in the final race in Brazil. Sato began the 2007 season by progressing through Q3 for the opening round, and from there he just kept getting better.

For the Canadian GP Bridgestone supplied soft and super soft specification tyres. Almost all the teams decided to start with the soft tyres, which were most resistant to wear, and to save the super soft for the last laps of the race. However, this developed into a troubled race, with the safety car being deployed four times. Sato began the race on soft tyres but then switched to super soft whenever the safety car was out. And then towards the end of the race he reverted to his soft tyres. This proved to be a good strategy, as his greater grip allowed him to overtake cars still using super soft tyres. In the end, he even passed the previous year's champion Alonso, to finish in sixth place.

Watching this performance by Sato and Super Aguri, we were pleased to see how the restriction to one make of tyre stimulated the teams to come up with new strategies.

Sole supply puts new demands on tyre engineers

It's easy to talk about ensuring equal treatment for all teams, but it's almost impossible to imagine how difficult that was in reality. Tetsuro Kobayashi, Bridgestone Technical Manager until 2010, comments: "Implementing Bridgestone's impartiality policy and at the same time retaining the trust and confidence of all teams - well, let's say it wasn't an easy thing to pull off."

"A Bridgestone tyre engineer was assigned to each team. Naturally we had to have ongoing technical communications with all these engineers. What we quickly realised was that as they worked with their teams they began to identify quite deeply with them. This strengthening relationship made their work more effective, but it also put them in danger of losing their commitment to impartiality. We saw they were starting to respond to requests by their teams to push the limits of the conditions we had placed on tyre use. Of course, we couldn't allow this, so at one point we had to speak strictly to all the teams to enforce the impartiality policy."

It was quite a problem for the tyre engineers, who were committed to helping their teams win and at the same time to respecting Bridgestone's policies. From what Kobayashi says, it was very important to prevent them getting too emotionally involved with their teams.

"Everyone got tyres with exactly the same specifications, but the way each team used them affected the amount of wear and durability and, as a result, their speed. For that reason the tyre engineers had to carefully check the tyres after use and consider the car's settings in order to determine whether the tyres were being used in the ideal way. And they had to be able to explain and have technical discussions with their teams - that's the level of engineer we wanted: engineers able to think beyond just the tyres, and be able to propose settings for the car."

These engineers were engaged in a constant battle with themselves, on the one hand wanting to become an integral part of their assigned team, and on the other, holding onto their pride as Bridgestone tyre engineers. We're proud to say that our young engineers succeeded in this rather difficult feat, allowing us to provide uniform, high-quality service to all the teams.