Interview with Hirohide Hamashima22/08/2010

Hamashima Time - Pt. 1

After studying polymer physics at university, Hamashima joined Bridgestone Corporation in 1977, moving to the passenger car tyre development programme in 1980. In 1981, he moved to the UK as the Technical Manager for motorsports, as part of a very small team taking the Bridgestone brand into competition.

Motor racing now occupies most of his time, however when he was assigned to the motorsport department, he had little interest in motor racing and no knowledge about it either. This and other facts are revealed as Hamashima answers the questions looking back over his career working for Bridgestone Motorsport, here in Part One, looking at the period before Bridgestone entered Formula One.

Q: How did you get into motorsport?

HH: The personnel department decided to move me from passenger car tyre development to the motorsport department in March 1981.

Q: Before that did you have any interest in motorsport?

HH: Nothing, completely nothing.

Q: What were you interested in?

HH: At that time, skiing, not competitively, just for fun.

Q: When you started what were your first projects?

HH: My new project was Formula 2 in Europe. We did also have some Japanese motorsports projects too, and at that time Bridgestone changed the construction from cross ply to radial in motorsports, especially Formula Cup and this was a very big project.

Q: Why change from cross ply to radial?

HH: Because cross ply technology was already saturated so we needed a new construction, that’s why we changed to radial to continue development and keep learning.

Q: How big a challenge was Formula 2? Was that your first time working outside of Japan?

HH: Yes, from the middle of March through to June, I was working in Japan to develop radial tyres, and operating F2 in Japan. Then in July I moved to Europe, where we operated from London.

London was good. Before April though it was very cool, and there were interesting differences from Japan. For example, the daylight hours in summer are longer than in Japan. Also at that time I was very surprised as shopping centres were closed on Saturday and Sunday. At that time I was single and working very hard, so I struggled to buy food and other things.

Q: From competition terms how was the first season in Formula 2?

HH: Pirelli, M&H and Dunlop were our competitors. At some high speed courses our radial tyres were not so strong. At mid to slow courses, on very slippery courses and also in wet conditions, our radial tyres were much much stronger than others. As a result Geoff Lees won the championship in our first season.

Q: What was the next step after that?

HH: More F2 at that time, for another 3 years.

Q: After F2 what was the next major project?

HH: For me, was Group C. These were fast powerful cars. We did Group C in Japan plus the Le Mans 24 hours. The power and weight of these cars was far greater than the Formula 2 cars so we needed new technology to produce the tyres. The tyres were much bigger too. This was a big challenge, and in particular the centrifugal forces generated, so it was very interesting.

Q: Was this a successful period?

HH: Sometimes we struggled with centrifugal force but eventually we found a solution, I believe we made a good strong tyre for Le Mans and Group C. This project went on until 1990.

Q: What was the next step?

HH: Next was DTM. These were again heavy cars, but they required good handling due to the nature of the racing. Compromise was important here; they required both of the technologies we had developed, for Group C and for Formula 2. This was very demanding for us and we also faced a strong competitor in Michelin.

Things didn’t always go well. For example, 1991 at Nurburgring was a disaster for us. There was very cold rain, or sleet, and in those conditions, our wet tyre didn’t work well. It was about four or five seconds slower than our rivals. In charge of the AMG Mercedes squad was Mr. Norbert Haug, and he was very upset, and they changed tyres to our rival for the next day.

This made us work very hard, and after one month, we tested and tested very hard, then we produced new wet tyres. With these new tyres we had a win in wet conditions, beating the four wheel drive cars which also raced. Klaus Ludwig was very happy that day. He said he didn’t need four wheel drive, just Bridgestones.

Q: After DTM, what happened next?

HH: Next we had the Indy project in the USA, with Firestone tyres. Then they separated with IndyCar using Firestone and ChampCar using Bridgestone. The tyres in the beginning were the same, but ChampCar went to road courses and circuits, while IndyCar stayed on the ovals so they used separate technologies.

Q: Looking back, Bridgestone purchased Firestone in 1998; Firestone had been in Formula One years before, did we learn anything from a different company? They had a lot of motorsport in the USA.

HH: Unfortunately when we joined Firestone their racing development at that time was very small. Nobody had Formula One experience, because they had done drag car tyre development, but only limited development.

For their then motorsport programme they produced Indy Lights first, then they came to Japan, to learn about our design technology. We started the Indy project, for which we learnt the stagger system from US racing. In the beginning we could not understand the stagger system, as we were used to cars with a differential, so it was quite a challenge.

Also IndyCar generates very strong centrifugal force all of the time when it is on an oval. For Group C the courses are longer and of a different characteristic, so although there are high forces, the tyre could rest as they are not under continual high loads.

IndyCar is different, so this made us very strong.