Bridgestone Motorsport Singapore Logistics Feature
18/09/2008
The weekend of the Singapore Grand Prix will be an interesting one logistically for Bridgestone Motorsport as at 684 square kilometres (264 square miles) Singapore is the smallest country in South East Asia. It will also be Formula One’s first ever night race taking place on a new 5.067km street circuit in the heart of the country’s cosmopolitan capital city, which will no doubt add further challenges.
To cater to the needs of 10 Formula One teams Bridgestone will bring 2,000 Bridgestone Potenza tyres to the city centre circuit. The life of a Bridgestone Potenza tyre begins at Bridgestone’s factory in Kodaira City, Tokyo, where the tyres have been computer designed using Bridgestone’s vast experience and then thoroughly tested for both safety and performance in the factory and on the track in the winter tests prior to each season.
Before leaving the factory each tyre is checked for faults, before being passed to Quality Control for final approval. Each tyre is identified with a Bridgestone number and FIA [Federation International de L’Automobile] barcode, enabling the sport’s governing body to randomly allocate the tyres to the teams and drivers. In total, Bridgestone produces approximately 60,000 Formula One tyres per year.
To reach the Singapore circuit the 2,000 tyres were sent via sea freight from Yokohama Harbour, having been delivered there by truck from Kodaira. Bridgestone has also sent eight tyre fitting machines and eight tyre balancing machines, which are used to fit and balance the tyres to the rims provided by the teams and other necessary equipment from the Bridgestone Motorsport base in the UK. The tyres alone weigh 20,000kg. Approximately 50 members of technical, tyre servicing, press and marketing, management and catering staff will also arrive in Singapore.
On arrival in Singapore the tyres will be delivered from the docks to the Bridgestone tyre fitting area in the marina. The advance group meanwhile of Bridgestone’s tyre fitting team will have arrived on the Sunday so that facility inspections can be done on Monday ahead of the arrival of the remainder of the tyre fitting team on Monday evening. The engineers will arrive on the Tuesday evening. On landing in Singapore, they will make their way to their accommodation for some much needed rest ahead of what will be a very exciting but busy and tiring week.
After a good night’s sleep, Bridgestone’s tyre fitting team will arrive at the circuit on Tuesday morning to start preparing their equipment, take delivery of the first load of tyres and ensuring they are ready for the many hours of arduous tyre fitting which lies ahead of them. And, at 10am on Wednesday morning, the fitting team of 18 men and two ladies will commence fitting the tyres in order of each team’s previous season’s championship results i.e. Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro and BMW Sauber F1 Team first followed by ING Renault F1 Team and the AT&T Williams F1 team and so forth.
The majority of the fitting of the dry and wet tyres happens on the Wednesday and Thursday. Due to the need to receive tyre deliveries in normal working hours, Bridgestone’s fitting staff will work normal day time hours until Thursday, when they will switch to a later work schedule, arriving on track late in the afternoon and working into the night in line with Singapore’s night race start times for the weekend’s activities.
And as if the tyre fitters’ jobs were not lengthy enough, Bridgestone would normally mark the softer of the two dry tyre compounds and the extreme wet tyres with a white line. This would be done at the final stage of the fitting process when the tyres are being balanced. As a tyre spins round, a white line is painted in the second from inside groove, the aim being to increase the public and media’s understanding of what tyre strategies teams have employed. However, as the tyres for Singapore will use a special reflective paint, for better visibility in the night lights, they have been prepared in Japan prior to shipping.
Once the weekend running starts on Friday however, the routine changes and Bridgestone’s engineers and technicians turn their attention to closely monitoring their tyres. Bridgestone engineers and technicians work with each team in the garages and note temperatures and pressures, while others are on standby in the fitting area, ready for any last minute work.
After the race has been completed, all the tyres are then stripped from their rims. Some of the tyres will be sent to Japan for further analysis, whilst the remainder will be sent to the UK warehouse before being scrapped and burnt as fuel, making a positive contribution to energy recovery.