Bridgestone Motorsport Press Conference

Bridgestone Motorsport Press Conference

A great season for
Bridgestone

Hisao Suganuma, Technical Manager of Bridgestone Motorsport and Ferrari Technical Director Ross Brawn.

This year you’ve had a tremendously successful season for Bridgestone tyres, culminating in what was your most successful race (this season) at the Belgian GP, even though you didn’t win it. You had second, third, fourth and fifth. What are your feelings on the season so far from the tyre point of view?
Hisao Suganuma: We are very proud of our tyre performance this year. Of course, before the season started we worked hard in the winter time to improve our tyre performance because last year we struggled a little bit even though we were champions. Then people started to say that maybe our rival had a better performance from a tyre point of view. So we really tried to reverse that feeling in people, and we put in a lot of effort. Then when the first race started we saw that we had an advantage. And all through the season we kept that performance advantage. That was very encouraging and also gave us extra motivation to develop a better tyre.

Ross, what are you feelings about it so far?
Ross Brawn: I think last year was a tough year, but it was a great catalyst for us to look at how we could go even further in our relationship together - Bridgestone and Ferrari. We’ve had a very good partnership for several years. It’s nice sometimes to have that extra challenge, which we had last year, and to see how people react. At Ferrari we were able to look internally at how we wanted to improve, and the great thing was to see Bridgestone respond, and how they improved. For me personally it’s been a very rewarding and fascinating period. To work with a completely different culture, Japanese culture, has been really invigorating. I think for our Bridgestone friends to work with a sort of pseudo Italian Anglo-Saxon culture has been very interesting. Because we do things differently, there’s no doubt about it. To discover the way we do things, and how we can work more effectively together, has been a real reward. And the reward has been these championships. I’ve certainly never experienced this close a technical partnership with a company as Bridgestone and Ferrari have. I think it’s a huge asset to both companies that on a human level and a technical level we’ve responded in the way we work together. It was great. Last year was tough, and it could have gone either way this year, and instead it went up. I’m delighted with this season.



One thing this year has been the fact that it takes your tyres a little bit longer to heat up. Can you explain why that is and is there an advantage somewhere else?
HS: Yes, that kind of characteristic is down to mainly compounds. Our compound characteristic means it takes a little bit more time to get to the right temperature to work. But once it gets to the right temperature, it shows good performance, and it stays longer. To have better consistency, like you have seen in this year’s races, we have to give away that kind of performance.

Ross, have you been happy with that side of things?
RB: Let’s say we’ve accepted it, because the overall package is the correct combination. The tyres have been fantastic, consistent, and in race conditions they’ve been great. There’s been a price to pay, which is the warm-up performance, which we’ve known about. It goes without saying that Bridgestone are trying to improve that aspect of the tyre, because at places like Spa with three safety cars, it hurts us. But if you look at the season overall, that’s not the most important factor, the warm-up performance. The most important factor is the consistency and overall performance in the race, and that’s been great. We’ve accepted it and Bridgestone have accepted it, but they are trying to fix that without losing the strong characteristic of the tyre, and that’s a very difficult thing.

We saw a new philosophy of tyre at Hungary this year. Can you tell us about it and are we going to see it again?
HS: I think that you may see it in the near future. We were really trying to make a big step forward, and in Hungary we saw a really big step forward. That tyre is still under development, and we need to make sure everything is OK. That is why we didn’t use it after that race. That [tyre] had really improved grip performance and traction performance.

Do you think you will want to use that tyre again, Ross?
RB: Oh yes, it was a very good step forward, but we just don’t have enough experience on it at tracks like this. It was developed for a specific purpose, which was to win Hungary, and it was very successful at that. But it now needs to be developed for us to be able to use it at other tracks. We’ve made some steps, and I think we will see that concept of tyre used before the end of the season. It’s the basis of the concept of tyre for next year.

Can you tell us also about the philosophy regarding the tyre choice in Belgium as well? We got the impression that it was a relatively conservative tyre, but conservative for safety reasons.
RB: Yes, both we and Bridgestone treat safety as the ultimate priority. We could have taken the Hungary tyre to Spa. But we didn’t have the experience with it, and we certainly didn’t have enough high speed running with that tyre to be able to say that we were comfortable with it. So in fact in Belgium we went for an older spec tyre which we knew would be safe and durable, and that was the tyre we raced. It’s just the amount of experience you have with each tyre. The tyre that we used in Spa was fundamentally the tyre that we had used at high-speed circuits last year, so it was a tyre that we had a lot of high-speed circuit experience with. We were a little bit cautious, but I think that’s the right side of the ideal decision.

There was a puncture here in testing [previous week]. I think it’s a fairly simple story what happened. Can you talk us through it, what was left, what were you able to deduce? HS: Actually, in that case, the circumstances of what happened with that tyre meant both tyre and rim were badly destroyed. So to be honest, it is very difficult to analyse in detail. But we believe that it was likely that Michael had a puncture, and that caused the problem.

How worried are you about debris on circuits, as perhaps caused the punctures to your rivals at Spa? What can be done?
HS: To run safely on a racing circuit at very high speeds, air pressure is a very big factor. The tyre needs to have the right amount of pressure during running. If debris damages the tyre and it loses air, that is a big problem. So of course debris should be removed in any conditions, to make the race safer. But so far we haven’t suffered with that kind of problem. Maybe we were lucky, or for some other reason, but we’re really paying attention to make racing safe.

RB: In the longer term there are two important initiatives happening. One is next year there will be the ability to suspend the race behind the safety car, so when the safety car goes out, it picks up the group of cars, comes round, and it can stop. The clock keeps running, but the cars just stop on the grid, or in an appropriate place. Then the track can be cleaned up, and as soon as the track is cleaned, the safety car starts again with the cars behind it, and then comes into the pits. That means that we have an opportunity then to look at the tyres, make sure they’re OK, put blankets on them to keep the temperatures and pressures up. I think for a severe accident, when there’s debris on the track, that’s the safest way. If the safety car is because of an off-track incident, then of course the safety car will keep running, because there’s no need to stop it. The second thing which has been requested by the FIA, and I think there’s been a very good response from the teams, is to start an initiative to look at construction methods of bodywork to stop the amount of debris we’re getting when there’s an impact or there’s damage. The first tests look very encouraging. Both ourselves and Williams have carried out experiments where we still use the same materials, but we basically cover them with a very tough, high-strength material like Xylon or Kevlar. And that seems to reduce the debris emission enormously. So you can smash a component like that, but all the debris stays together, even though the component may have failed. Whereas at the moment when you damage a component, there’s a lot of debris spread out. So I think there are two key initiatives which are going to be in place for next year, and we’re looking at using those construction methods on front wings, front wing endplates, bargeboards, all the sort of things that tend to get lost in an accident. I think that will help a lot to reduce the amount of debris that we’re seeing on the track.

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Bridgestone