Mr Yasukawa feature with James Gresham26/07/2009

James Gresham (JG), an indispensable person when it comes to Bridgestone’s F1 activities, joins Hiroshi Yasukawa (HY) in the latest of his series of behind-the-scenes features in conjunction with F1 journalist Kunihiko Akai (KA).

James Gresham is one of Bridgestone’s key logistics men. Anyone who has been involved in Japanese motorsport may well find his name familiar. He is the man who sold March F2 chassis to the Japanese motorsport market as a Far East sales representative of March Engineering. These chassis have overwhelmed Japanese F2 races since the late 1970s and Gresham and Yasukawa have known each other ever since those days.

KA: Mr. Gresham, you must know many people in the Japanese motor racing world.
JG: Yes. Since 1973 I had been working for March, the race car manufacturer founded by Max Mosley and Robin Herd. Its market was in Europe but was expanding to Japan and to the United States as well. I went to Japan for the first time in 1978 and knew about Bridgestone even then.

HY: James and I have worked together since 1978, when he first came to Japan. In the late 1990s when we decided to participate in F1 we knew we wanted experienced people who knew motor racing. That’s when I spoke to Peter Grzelinski, and became reacquainted with James.

KA: What did you do then?
JG: Well, by then, I had retired from motorsport and begun my career as a builder in the early 1990s. However, land prices rose so remarkably high in the UK that eventually business was very difficult and I had no work for a little while. I had known Peter Grzelinski for a long time and kept in touch with him. It was on one of those occasions that he said to me, “Bridgestone offered me a job. They need another person who knows motorsport – I’d like to see you.”

KA: When did you meet up?
JG: At a race car show in early 1997. I understood from him that Bridgestone needed experienced personnel and he asked me for help. I replied that I didn’t know how to help him, because I had no experience in F1 and knew little about tyres. Therefore I asked him to give me a month’s trial period in the job and if he found I could do the job professionally then he could hire me.

KA: It worked well, then.
JG: Some days after I met up with Peter I went to a Bridgestone office in High Wycombe. The office was almost empty, equipped with a telephone and a fax machine only, and no computers. He was just going away for a test when I arrived so I brought my own computer in the next day. I had no other choice! While I was working alone in the office, a man came in. It was Mr Yasukawa. He didn’t ask any questions but he knew who I was as he’d checked me out and just said, “Keep on working there”.

KA: That’s how you were given the job? How fortunate!
JG: I appreciated his support. That said, there were only two months left before the opening round and Bridgestone was supposed to provide tyres to five teams in that first year. It involved a lot of preparation work. We had to start from scratch and the first thing we did was purchase equipment. Those were hectic days. We had to send tyres and equipment, and we had to recruit enough staff. We were desperately trying to get everything ready in time. But at the same time we were happy. When we arrived in Australia for the first round of the year, I personally felt we were better organized than our competitor who had been involved in F1 for many years by then.

KA: That’s marvelous.
JG: Actually, we had to face one challenge after another. The biggest challenge was the first European round. We transported tyres for the continental races by trucks but we didn’t own any back then. So we bought trucks, modified them and added our own designs. Despite having to overcome many issues in such a short time period and being exhausted, it was quite exciting and challenging.

KA: Bridgestone is a Japanese company. Were there any difficulties in becoming accustomed to their way of doing things?
JG: It was my first experience of being hired by a Japanese company, so of course I found several differences between the Japanese and European cultures. There are certain ways of doing business in Japan and sometimes it was necessary to tell them we needed to be more flexible. It was also my first experience of working for such a major company like Bridgestone. They were one of the world’s largest tyre and rubber manufacturers by then so I must admit there was some pressure.

HY: When Bridgestone started F1 none of us knew what to do. But I believe that is part of what made us strong. There was nothing for us to be afraid of. Sometimes Japanese cultures and European cultures conflict with each other, but I believed I could work as a bridge to connect them based on my experiences living in Europe for many years. As time passed, the Bridgestone staff came to understand me and the work started to proceed smoothly. Everybody was working with the same enthusiasm.

JG: You may be right. Our lack of F1 knowledge might have worked well for us. Innovative ideas would emerge from having less knowledge. Of course, not all new ideas are good ideas! However, I think it is far better than being restricted by experience and sticking to old ideas.

KA: And yet logistics is a tough task.
JG: Well, I’m not the kind of person who makes a detailed plan. Firstly, I try to make things proceed simply and I’m always thinking about what is the next step. Race preparations would take three to six weeks. It is difficult for me to explain it all. As I said, I’m not the kind of person who makes a detailed plan (laugh)!

HY: I don’t think so. He is too modest. He does make a detailed plan. First of all, he makes a year round plan, for 52 weeks. On which weekends will races be held? Which measures will be the least costly to transport tyres? He thinks about such things. Sometimes year round plans require revisions and I explain the reasons for such revisions to him. If James finds the explanation reasonable then he sets about revising the plan. Although he says he does not make a detailed plan, he does make a plan in my opinion. If you were to visit our warehouse prior to the onset of the season you will find items headed for several different destinations. When the season starts, and when tyres are delivered from Japan, what we must do first is to place them on shelves in the warehouse, put them in separate groups according to race destinations and then send them out promptly and securely with the least cost. Most of the procedures, from the development of our system of bar codes provided by the FIA, to tyre assortment and management, were done by James. His hard work strikes a balance between good timing and reasonable expense.

KA: Do you have any interesting stories to tell us?
JG: When we dispatched our tyres and equipment for the Grand Prix of Brazil in 1997, Bernie Ecclestone’s company (the current FOM), which handled the transportation, contacted me to say that the equipment could be loaded on to the scheduled flight but there was no extra space for the tyres! I asked them to send the tyres by any means, and they found a space on a chartered flight, which they said would cost $500,000. I was so shocked by this large sum that I dropped the phone. I told them we could not afford it. Fortunately they found another flight leaving from Holland, which was $200,000. The flight departure date was the next day so I rushed to arrange trucks, loaded the tyres on them and sent them off to Holland. Anyway, we had saved as much as $300,000.

KA: Are transportation fees for tyres and equipment for flyaway races so expensive?
JG: Yes, and that is a special F1 rate. Later we found out it would cost too much if we sent items such as equipment by air, so we found another way of dealing with it. The procedure involved first sending tyres by ship and then purchasing essential equipment locally. It cost a lot in that first year, but we had successfully saved money by then by using locally purchased equipment. Actually, we have saved millions of dollars over the past thirteen years. Currently we own four sets of equipment: one is in Japan, one in Malaysia, and two are presently in the UK. Some of this equipment was purchased in 2000 and is still in use.

KA: From a professional point of view what is your philosophy for this job?
JG: We must be fair to all the teams to whom we provide tyres. Teams have different requests and requirements so we try to serve them according to their respective requirements. Meanwhile we must not do anything that other teams may complain about. It is really difficult to accomplish but we must do it and that’s how you earn every team’s trust. We are proud of our tyres in terms of their performance and of our fairness in our provision of services.

HY: James knows us very well and so it is quite comfortable for us to work with him. I am also satisfied with his approach to the job. He is a nice and reliable man for all of us at Bridgestone.

JG: Mr. Yasukawa and Mr. Hamashima are good friends of mine, as well as good business partners. I would like to work smoothly and fairly in the future too.

To hear further insights from Mr. Yasukawa, please read the following articles:
Bridgestone in motorsport 2009
Life in MotoGP
Importance of MotoGP rider feedback
Developing Formula One technology
Charlie Whiting interview
Formula One benefits for the brand
Motorsport and the Spanish market
Importance of Motorsport in North America