WHAT ARE YOU PAYING FOR?

When you buy a pair of tyres it’s easy to think that you’re paying for a couple of round pieces of rubber, but that’s not strictly true. What a big chunk of your hard earned readies is going towards is the research and development of past, present and future tyres. Different tyre manufacturers spend their R&D budgets in different ways; Michelin, for example, invest heavily in MotoGP but Bridgestone have gone down a different route. By developing a technology known as Ultimate-EYE (U-EYE), Bridgestone engineers are able to see exactly how a tyre behaves when in contact with the road, enabling them to optimise the design quickly and efficiently.

According to Fabian François, field and product planning engineer for Bridgestone: “The U-EYE machine is a big drum where we can apply loads, angles, deformation forces and camber thrust forces onto a tyre. Everything is measured by sensors and graphed on a computer which gives us a detailed picture of the pressure distribution of the tyre’s contact patch. It is a way to take the guesswork and trial and error out of development and has been used to in our Formula 1 and MotoGP development programs. It is the only machine in the world which can test real conditions at 400kph (249mph).”

Bridgestone’s internal slogan is ‘Dan-Totsu’ which is Japanese for ‘the absolute top’. Their aim isn’t just to be the best, but to way better than the opposition and I’m sure that they’ll be hoping their patented U-EYE Technology will help themget there.