Our second year as Formula One sole supplier. With race regulations unchanged from the previous year, Hamashima could comment that the work was almost becoming routine for us. Once again, we brought two types of dry-weather and three types of wet to the circuit. Our goal for the year was to ensure that we supported all teams impartially, with an emphasis on tyre safety.
Jun Sakiyama had been taking part in the F1 project since 1997 as a compounder, and then from 1999 he was also assigned to be engineer for the Ferrari team. This made things difficult for him: "Because I was assigned to Ferrari, of course I couldn't also work directly with McLaren. But I was also acting as the compounder, so I had to get many types of information from our engineers with all the teams." And then, just as we were getting used to being sole supplier, we were startled to hear that Michelin planned to return to Formula One. As soon as this was announced, BMW Williams and Jaguar promptly decided to switch to Michelin for 2001. Sakiyama remembers feeling excited by the news: "It would make our development work much more intense, but I was looking forward to the competition." In preparation for the coming year's contest, we introduced a new development tyre during in-season tests.