Bridgestone teams to cooperate to beat Michelin ?

By Huw Alban
February 1 2006

Thanks to our kind forum contributors CRX and JoaoAfonso we can report on an article that has been published in the Portuguese Autosport about the four Bridgestone shod teams agreeing to work together.

This bizarre and quite frankly unbelievable news item reports that Ferrari, Toyota, Midland, and Williams have signed a “Bridgestone Users Cooperation Pact” in which they have agreed to share technical tyre information obtained at both test sessions and Grand Prix races. What isn’t clear from the article is whether this “pact” was brokered by Bridgestone themselves, although you’d have thought that it would be.

The article goes on to speculate that such a deal is a desperate move by Bridgestone to try and beat rival Michelin, in what will be the French tyre manufacturer's last season of F1 (for the moment at least).

This news has been greeted with considerable scepticism by other forum contributors here at MF1O. Most feel that, assuming this agreement is true, Ferrari will not willingly share all their information in order to maintain an edge over their competitors.

If true, could be a great move for all four teams with Bridgestone creating a tyre that suits the chassis behaviour, transmission characteristics and suspension travel for eight cars on the grid. Midland would stand to gain substantially from the input of three other top teams, especially in getting a tyre that is competitive and works well with the new Toyota V8 powered M16.

The one thing that bothers me with such an agreement is the risk of mis-information. Let’s say that this is true and these four teams agree to work together on tyre development, and they make progress during the first races of the season with all four teams scoring handsome numbers of World Championship points. Every team out there wants to win the Constructors World Championship, and who would notice the odd mistake in the information passed across ? OK, you could argue that as a result all four would suffer, but I’m sure the mathematicians in the team passing the mis-information can massage the numbers sufficiently so as not to do them harm.

Have your say on this on the forum.