Toyota and Bridgestone working together

By Nick Sparkes
January 17 2006

The early running of Toyota’s TF106 would had been lead by the arrival of their new tyre supplier Bridgestone. After a disastrous 2005 season for Bridgestone, them along with Ferrari, Toyota and Williams are keen to bring the tyre supplier back to the front of the grid.

During November and December the Toyota team ran Bridgestone tyres for the first time, and concentrated on taking home valuable data to shape their 2006 racer. Last season Toyota suffered from a car which eat its tyres during the long distance races, but with the reintroduction of pit stops, and a tyre supplier who won its championships around short and snappy stints could help give Toyota the break into the top three it needs.

Toyota’s chief engineer Dieter Gass is pleased that they are working with Bridgestone. “We've learned quite a lot, the first session was almost easier than expected, but we did a lot of preparation work. The initial coupling of Bridgestone with our car was straightforward, and everything worked well as we learned about the way to use the new tyres."

Gass concluded, "We made very basic and predictable adjustments, scanned the most important set-up parameters and collected important data in order to update all our simulation tools for the different tyres. On top of that we have done a lot of work to ensure that we have the same aerodynamic attitude of the car with the Bridgestone tyres. After correcting a few parameters on the car set-up, all went pretty well."