Reading: Bridgestone technical boss talks about narrower F1 tyres

Bridgestone tyres technical manager Tetsuro Kobayashi has been sharing his thoughts on the first pre-season test at Valencia last week as the Fomula One teams start putting their cars through their paces.

Last season saw the re-introduction of slick tyres, new for 2010 are a narrower version.

Kobayashi explained: “The decision to change from grooved to slick tyres ahead of the 2009 season meant that the front tyres gained proportionately more contact surface area in comparison to the rear tyres.

“This in turn gave the fronts more grip than was ideally required. However, at the request of the teams, who had already designed their 2009 cars based on the previous sized fronts, we delayed the introduction of the narrow front until 2010.”

The new tyre is 20mm narrower (including wheel width) than the 2009 specification (2010 front tyre size: 245/55 R13) and it enables the cars to be better balanced from front to rear.

Koayashi added: “From the teams’ perspectives, they should have taken these new fronts into consideration when designing their 2010 cars and they were asked in particular to consider designing the cars with more rear carrying load in order to get the best out of the tyres.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 7th, 2010 at 9:33 pm and is filed under Blogs, Bridgestone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.