First Stop dealership, Addison Tyres, recently raised a fantastic £1000 for Leukaemia CARE. Addison Tyres hosted an event at its depot, in Tipton in the Midlands, where they showcased Bridgestone’s Formula One car and simulator to help raise money for the charity.
Avon Tyres ended a 27-year association with the British Formula 3 International Series at Donington Park on Sunday October 12, where Spain’s Jaime Alguersuari followed names such as Ayrton Senna and Mika Hakkinen by winning the UK’s top single-seater racing category. Next year the championship’s tyres will be branded under the name of Avon’s parent company, Cooper Tires.
Avon Tyres have been the sole tyre supplier to British F3 every year since 1982.
Bridgestone has announced that at Formula One’s upcoming Singapore Grand Prix it will mark its super-soft and extremely wet tyres with reflective paint for the first time. The race will be held at night, and the measure is intended to inform spectators of what tyre each driver is using.
Bridgestone is set to celebrate its 200th appearance in Formula One at this weekend’s European Grand Prix, which will take place on the streets of Valencia for the first time. Having debuted in 1997 at the Australian Grand Prix, Bridgestone – now the sport’s sole tyre provider – is looking forward to the challenge of dealing with the freshly completed street circuit, and has announced that it will provide teams with the two softest available compounds.
Having launched the new Accura Mobile – a Nitrogen tyre inflation cart – at Reifen this year, PCL has noted the increasing popularity of the machine, which is now available on the British market. The firm states that demand for nitrogen tyre inflation is rising fast in the UK, and PCL has pre-empted its popularity with the affordable yet high performance machine.
The compact N2 cart is designed for tyre shops, workshops, car dealerships, and transport depots, boasting ease of use, operated with an industry standard bottle or direct from a nitrogen generator and can be preset for a standard inflation top up, or operated with an N2 function for a purge and fill cycle. The Accura can inflate six tyres simultaneously, running off a sealed lead acid battery or a direct mains line.
Federal Tire has partnered with JustDrift Clinic to offer a series of instructional events for budding drift drivers. JustDrift is a member of U.S. Drift Association – Formula ProAm Series, and is the West Region host for pro-am events.
According to Federal, JustDrift is committed to professional driving instruction. Training sessions are available for beginners as well as more advanced drivers, Federal said, and feature hands-on experience and classroom work. Most recently, JustDrift held sessions this past June at Willow Springs Raceway. (Tire Review/Akron)
Engineers in the Avon Tyre Crew for the company-sponsored British GT Championship gave youngsters participating in the Young Engineers initiative the chance to glimpse their potential future careers.
The initiative is designed to encourage children to think about the importance of engineering and to develop an interest in the field to take through to higher education and beyond. Avon’s engineers showed the 19 11-year olds of All Saints Junior School in Hastings the ropes at the event at Thruxton race track on Sunday, June 29, which presented the ideal opportunity to promote this aspiration to the younger generation.
Trax, the UK’s leading weight manufacturer, is now supplying adhesive weights to Formula 1 control tyre supplier Bridgestone to support the racing series worldwide. According to a company statement announcing the news, the demanding requirements of Formula 1 have led the company to supply a particular type of special adhesive tape to ensure top-flight performance.
In the wake of the shelving of Formula One’s proposal to prohibit the use of tyre-warming blankets, Bridgestone – the sport’s tyre provider – is considering the possibility of a new approach, offering the teams a wider difference in terms of the compounds available. At each Grand Prix, Bridgestone is required to supply two different compounds, both of which each team is obliged to use for racing.
At present, teams and drivers complain that the compounds are too similar, leading to too little differentiation. Bridgestone’s proposed changes would mean that the tyres available, instead of being a mere one place apart – for example: very soft and soft – would vary more – such as with soft and hard.
The FIA is inviting will tenders for a new feeder series for Formula One. This championship, called Formula Two, will be launched in 2009 and used as an inexpensive platform to develop emerging driver talent for Formula One. It is hoped this can be achieved within a budget of around 200,000 euros a car per season.
Formula Two, in its previous incarnation, was eliminated in 1984 and replaced by the unsuccessful Formula 3000 championship. If Formula Two is re-introduced, a question mark would hang over the fate of the current GP2 series, which is solely supplied by Bridgestone; some believe that a new feeder series would be the death of GP2, and the possibility exists of a new tyre war emerging.
Following criticism from drivers and teams, the World Motor Sport Council is set to cancel its plans to forbid the use of tyre-warming blankets in Formula One. The proposed ban was due to be implemented from the start of the 2009 season, but safety fears abounded in the wake of the announcement.
Bridgestone, the manufacturer behind all F1’s tyres had previously suggested that the fears of drivers were motivated by the desire to retain an advantage over opposing teams, and that the company was confident that its new tyre would be safe to use whether cold or hot. The ban was proposed by the sport’s Technical Working Group as a way of slowing down the cars and making more possible the spectacle of passing manoeuvres.
Cooper has again partnered with Formula Drift for the entire seven-event 2008 Formula Drift Pro Championship Series.
“During a drift competition, tires play a huge role in keeping drivers on track and in the race, and we’re confident that Cooper Zeon high performance tires will allow drivers to showcase their drifting expertise,” said Chris Pantani, Cooper’s director of UHP marketing and motorsports
At the Formula Drift events, Cooper will be promoted as a co-sponsor on all printed and online event materials, as well as in banners, advertisements, programs/handouts, PA announcements, and television programming. (Tire Review/Akron)
In the USA, Taiwan-based Federal Tyres is sponsoring Henry Schelley in the Fifth annual Formula Drift Pro Championship. The seven–round competition, featuring courses in five different states across the country, began on 12 April on the Long Beach Grand Prix Street Course, where Shelley’s Mazda Rx-7 – fitted with Federal 595 Competition Series tyres – achieved a respectful 22nd placement from a field of more than 60 drift-modified vehicles.
Post-competition, Schelley praised Federal’s input into his performance: “The tyres seamlessly integrated with Mazda Rx-7 and simultaneously reported a sensitive road feedback which delivered the correct guidance in a split second so to make the track easy to navigate.” Federal hopes that Schelley’s performance will increase brand-awareness among the sold-out bleachers, filled with “racing buffs”, at each Drift Grand Prix course.
Bridgestone, the official supplier of tyres to Formula One, is refusing to buckle under pressure from teams and drivers over the introduction of a tyre warmer ban next season.
It is currently permitted for Formula One teams to keep tyres warm with the use of specially-manufactured blankets, and drivers have expressed a great deal of concern at the implications of a ban on the use of the product. Citing not only concerns over the speed differential between cold and hot slicks, Williams driver Nico Rosberg was quoted by autosport.com as stating, “It’s not racing, it’s survival”, calling into question the safety of the proposed ban.
Wolfrace has introduced the Pro-Lite alloy wheel; described by the company as the first Wolfrace lightweight wheel suitable for race and track use.
The Pro-Lite is similar in appearance to the successful Pro-Sprint wheel, with 12 spokes, but the manufacturing process means significant weight savings; for example, the 7.5×18″ Pro-Lite weighs 9.2kg, compared with 11kg for a standard alloy.
A number of colours/finishes are available, including Black/Machined, Shadow Chrome, Silver, Matt Black, Gloss Titanium, Urban Titanium and White. Available sizes (and weights) are: 6.5×15″ (6.2kg), 7×16″ (7.1kg), 7×17″ (7.8kg) and 7.5×18″ (9.2kg).
Wolfrace says that the wheel is currently being tested and developed by “a well-known team of race experts” and the company is hoping to use the Pro-Lite in a race formula in the near future.
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