From Rubber Tree to Racetrack

From being produced in Japan to the warehouse in Germany and beyond, Bridgestone’s MotoGP tyres may have a short life on the track, but their journey takes them across the world.

It all starts with trees

Bridgestone’s MotoGP tyres are designed and manufactured in Bridgestone’s Kodaira factory, near Tokyo, Japan, in the sort of meticulously controlled and clinical environment you’d expect of a tyre that performs on the world stage with the world’s best riders.

Like all of Bridgestone’s tyres though, the process starts out in the field with rubber which is harvested from one of Bridgestone’s several tree plantations in south-east Asia, where rubber has been the main export since the days of the British Empire.

With the rubber as the basic ingredient, Bridgestone’s Motorsport Tyre Development Department uses a very carefully calculated and measured recipe of more than ten different materials to arrive at the optimal blend for each compound, developed over years at the front.

Change any one of the ingredients or get the measurement wrong and the whole character of the tyre will change, so consistency and quality control right from this early stage is crucial.

Computer-controlled design

Bridgestone’s MotoGP tyres are designed using powerful computer systems and the vast amount of data collected from every race and test to calculate and simulate compounds and construction.

Again, precision is absolutely essential to ensure safety and performance at over 300kph, and braking forces approaching 2G. Nothing is left to chance and once the blended material and the computer design have come together to produce a tyre, rigorous safety tests follow.

Common ground with Formula One

The testing rigs used to ensure quality control and suitability of the compound and construction of MotoGP tyres are stringent to assure the highest performance and reliability, and share many similarities with the testing procedure for Bridgestone’s Formula One tyres right up until the end of 2010.

MotoGP tyres are tested rigorously and finally inspected by hand. This is how Bridgestone has come to build such a strong reputation for safety and quality control through the years of competing in MotoGP.

The logistical challenge

Getting the finished items to all the Grands Prix around the world is the next challenge, and one that Bridgestone takes very seriously. After all, no tyres equals no race.

Upon leaving the factory in Japan, the tyres are shipped either to Bridgestone Motorsport’s MotoGP base in Speyer, Germany, or on occasion directly to the overseas races such as Laguna Seca or Malaysia.

From Speyer, the correct tyre compounds are loaded onto trucks and driven to each European Grand Prix early on during the week of the race. Sometimes tyres are shipped from Speyer directly to overseas races, along with any coming from Japan, to ensure that there are always around 700 wet and slick tyres of the correctly selected compounds at every race.

Bridgestone Motorsport’s base

Thousands of MotoGP tyres are held at the Speyer base throughout the year to support teams during both the racing season and their winter test programmes. It’s not just a warehouse though, as it also serves as a base for Bridgestone’s tyre engineers, technicians and fitting staff.

On the sidewall of each tyre is printed two barcodes for monitoring and control purposes at the circuit, and to ensure the integrity of the single tyre system. Each tyre also comes marked with a label denoting batch number and compound, but ensuring the right compounds go to the right races is no easy task and requires more meticulous planning.

At the track

The MotoGP tyres have reached their destination but their journey is still not quite over. Arriving at each circuit three days before first practice to allow time for setup of the fitting area, Bridgestone works closely with the FIM to allocate the tyres to each rider the day before first practice, at which point the tyres are fitted onto the teams’ wheels and provided to each rider ready for usage.

As each rider takes to the track during the weekend, an enormous amount of tyre data is collected and stored and it is this data that feeds back into the computer-controlled design stage and allows Bridgestone to continually improve both MotoGP and road tyres.

After serving their purpose on track, every tyre is returned to Bridgestone at the end of each grand prix weekend and the return journey begins. Most tyres travel back to Speyer where they are put into an energy recovery programme and some return via sea freight to Japan for further detailed technical analysis and more data gathering, thereby completing their circle of life, only a fraction of which is spent actually on track but all of which is a key part of MotoGP.