We Only Get Judged by What We Do
Sometimes I feel sorry for the Bridgestone Corporation. Ever since the FIA opened the tender process to be Formula 1’s single tyre supplier, their marketing department have been struggling to keep the black and round things at the forefront of our minds, and in most cases they’ve failed.
The manufacturer did manage to convince the powers that be to mandate two types of rubber be used per race. However that’s served only to confuse race fans and quash any action during the final third of a GP. They only get press coverage when something goes wrong and teams are constantly referring to one their products as the “less favourable” or “inferior” compound.
Keeping all this in mind, my charitable side could almost forgive them for coming up with this loony marketing pitch:
Bridgestone may have created the ugliest Formula 1 tyre of all time.
Supposedly these things have been cooked up to promote the idea of reducing the impact of motoring on the environment, but let’s not indulge anyone in such altruistic fantasies for one second. It’s Bridgestone’s home race and they are desperate to do anything that’ll generate them a headline or two.
The tyres pictured above are to be used by F1 teams during this coming weekend. I’ve no idea how anyone is going to tell the one with the white and green stripes from the other one with just the green stripes, but I am now resolutely hoping for a very wet weekend - lest we have to set eyes on the damn things again.
Of course if you genuinely want green rubber, stuff that actually makes a difference and looks after the environment, you’ll be wanting a some Michelin Energy Saver tyres. Those things have been proven to last longer and offer better fuel economy to the likes of you and I. Now that is something worth shouting about.
Am I being harsh or missing the point, is this a good initiative for the sport to be involved with? And has there ever been an uglier tyre in F1?
October 8th, 2008 at 7:25 pmChristine said:
It’s a fine initiative, but does it have to be so ugly? Same as Honda. Why does being environmentally friendly mean you also can’t be pretty? Or just sensible, come to think of it.
October 8th, 2008 at 7:30 pmme said:
a good question. i feel especially sorry for williams, they have the best looking car on the grid and now they have to run with these things.
ferrari’s livery will probably look coordinated, by renault’s is not gonna be pretty.
October 8th, 2008 at 7:31 pmChristine said:
Wrong about Ferrari:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/7659017.stm
October 8th, 2008 at 7:35 pmme said:
oh good lord… it’s luminous green??
i see what they’re doing here. lowering our expectations so that next years ugly aero parts won’t seem half as bad when coupled with slicks.
we’ll be grateful and say “those rear wings make the cars look childish, but hey, not a green stripe in sight”.
October 8th, 2008 at 7:51 pmFlibster said:
Still hedious!
October 8th, 2008 at 8:27 pmJordan Allen said:
I have it all figured out. I do not know whether this would classify as a retro-look (for the tyre) or a fresh-chic look for F1 but why not use whitewalls on the tyres?
We can have black tyres for a compound, black tyres and whitewalls for a another compound…
Then you can throw in the white stripes for additional compounds for the wet weather tyres.
Finally since Bridgstone has figured out how to paint the tyres with green stripes, why not have the Ferrari run on the last race of the season with tyres that are completly coloured that shae of green with whitewalls and throw in some green on white stripes so that ferrari can wish us all a Happy Christmasth their “Candy Cane Car?”
Really, Why should Bernie and Max have all the fun with Crazy Decisions?
October 8th, 2008 at 8:30 pmme said:
am thinking, brazilian flag colours for felipe.
October 8th, 2008 at 9:15 pmlou said:
Honda’s livery this year isn’t ugly, last year’s was though.
If I’m honest I don’t see the major problem with having the green stripes on the tyres for the following reasons.
1. They are only using them for one race so after this weekend we will never have to see them again.
2. The track is at the bottom of a mountain which is notorious for rain, so the chances are they won’t be used for much of the weekend anyway
3. They shouldn’t look that bad on the Honda :)which is good cause the ra108 is ugly enough with those dumbo flugel.
but i can see it isn’t going to look pretty at all, but as i said, it’s not a permanent thing.
October 8th, 2008 at 9:17 pmlou said:
yikes that looks…awful!
October 8th, 2008 at 9:55 pmDom said:
Excuse me while I laugh..
Okay, all done.
I guess it might give us a vague idea how other coloured tyre markings look against the white ones for next year…
October 8th, 2008 at 9:59 pmme said:
anyone else thinking:
http://www.sweetsncandy.co.uk/prodimages/sofmin_l.jpg
October 8th, 2008 at 10:00 pmr.g (my fuji, if this expression doesn't catch on, then my god, they are missing out on something) said:
Sorry. Mwah ah ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha, ha ha ha. Ha.
I think this proves, white are just fine. Jusst fine.
As for the Honda livery, I prefered last years with this one, I could see my house last year anyways
October 8th, 2008 at 10:02 pmr.g (my fuji, if this expression doesn\'t catch on, then my god, they are missing out on something) said:
Thank god I wasn’t the only one.
Erm, do I win the longest name competition.
October 8th, 2008 at 10:05 pmme said:
my fuji, no chance. you broke the layout of the site
October 8th, 2008 at 10:05 pmSteven Roy said:
Let me get this straight. Bridgestone is going to run uglier tyres than it should be humanly possible to produce. And thid is to promote environmentally friendliness. The company thst makes F1 tyres in Japan and then flies them to England from where they are shipped all round Europe and beyond want to tell us about enirometally friendliness.
I think I am missing something here.
October 8th, 2008 at 10:07 pmr.g (my fuji, i managed to break sidepodcast.com) said:
is that better me?
October 8th, 2008 at 10:08 pmme said:
what’s mental is the two top teams think this is a good idea and are happy to encourage it. so…
a) why didn’t honda get asked?
b) how jealous of honda are the top teams right now?
c) is everyone in f1 blind as well as dumb?
October 8th, 2008 at 10:09 pmme said:
thanks r.g!
October 8th, 2008 at 10:14 pmlou said:
lol i wasn’t but now you mention it….
October 8th, 2008 at 10:19 pmlou said:
hahaha!!
you would have thought they would have been tbh, with all the environmental awareness they try to do, and the fact that they are a Japanese too… would have thought it would have been perfect.
October 8th, 2008 at 10:24 pmr.g (my fuji, i managed to break sidepodcast.com) said:
Piquet, yes, not so sure about everyone else though…
October 9th, 2008 at 12:02 amScott Woodwiss said:
I don’t think these are the ugliest tyres. I’m thinking the painted Pirelli tyres Benetton ran with one race weekend in 1986 are. they had a different colour for each tyre
October 9th, 2008 at 12:07 amme said:
i recall seeing a picture recently. they were ugly.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:08 amScott Woodwiss said:
Also, to quote something from another forum, don’t these painted tyres look like mint flavoured liqourice sweets?
October 9th, 2008 at 12:12 amStuart C said:
You know you’re missing out on something – well, that something depends on you.
[Name that tune...]
October 9th, 2008 at 12:19 amme said:
if i name it, will you publicly *out* me for having terrible taste?
October 9th, 2008 at 12:25 amStuart C said:
Absolutely not. Mrs C and I are going to see them (on the same bill as Heaven 17 and the Human League) in a month and a bit, and there is the grimly inevitable prospect that I’ll be murdering at least one of their tunes on karaoke this trip…
October 9th, 2008 at 12:25 amScott Woodwiss said:
Well I know you guys are known for sometimes bad music taste, but…
SUGABABES?! *runs away very quickly and hides*
October 9th, 2008 at 12:28 amScott Woodwiss said:
Still on the subject of tyres:
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/71223
October 9th, 2008 at 12:29 amStuart C said:
Try again! Wrong era.
Here’s something random from around that time…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dJECidMqOQ
October 9th, 2008 at 12:29 amme said:
c’mon, it was a subtle and clever title. and the only people who’d make that link would be…?
October 9th, 2008 at 12:30 amStuart C said:
In terms of crimes against musical taste, perhaps it’s appropriate that Alexei Sayle has got me in the moderation queue…
October 9th, 2008 at 12:32 amme said:
if you’re going down that road, you can’t top:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4uw2BbSv8M
or can you?
October 9th, 2008 at 12:32 amScott Woodwiss said:
well it was the first song that came up after i searched the lyrics in google
October 9th, 2008 at 12:34 amAlianora La Canta said:
Ugly. Second single off the “Taller In More Ways” album. It came back into the library a few weeks ago.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:35 amStuart C said:
And the answer is…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkwEK9AYQHg
What an awful video!
October 9th, 2008 at 12:35 amAlianora La Canta said:
And I’ve just thought - bright green stripes surrounding a not-so-bright white one. Won’t that make it more difficult to differentiate between the hard and soft tyres?
October 9th, 2008 at 12:35 amme said:
that’s the song that inspired the title of this post, yup.
but… not the song sc was referring to.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:36 amme said:
the word you’re looking for is… impossible.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:37 amAlianora La Canta said:
I didn’t even know Alexi Sayle had sung anything. The only context in which I’ve heard of him was when I was in Year 10 and our class had to watch a documentary of him talking about what prison life was like.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:38 amme said:
never heard of it
October 9th, 2008 at 12:39 amStuart C said:
Dreadful champaaaaaaagne Marxist, that man. He’s a property baron now - owns places in trendy parts of London.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:46 amAlianora La Canta said:
I bet Alexi isn’t doing much selling right now, then. But then again property development has been a very profitable avenue for many years now.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:12 amJordan Allen said:
After listening to a sound bit of Sugababes for the first time in my life; I am forced to conclude that Sidepodcast Towers members have such poor musical tastes that they can only be described as fanatical “Crazy Frog” fans…. who have yet to find the original versions of “Axel F” and “Popcorn”….
Listerning to Sugababes was more painful than find out that Montreal been taken from the calender……
October 9th, 2008 at 2:17 amme said:
you’ve never checked out our last.fm profile have you?
October 9th, 2008 at 2:31 amJordan Allen said:
No, I paid attention to your warning, me. “Horrible 80’s pop” and all that. You proability listened to either Banamarama’s “Venus” or “Cruel Summer”… recently.
I think you could use some Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit”, Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”, or Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells”, and to cap it all off, “Superfreak” by Rick James.
October 9th, 2008 at 9:46 amme said:
jordan:
yes, yes, no, yes, yes, no
October 9th, 2008 at 3:23 pmFelipe Leite said:
The sad thing is that we won’t have any oreo tyres this weekend. I kinda like them
October 9th, 2008 at 3:24 pmme said:
and only two more races before they’ll be banished forever
October 9th, 2008 at 3:42 pmJordan Allen said:
But now we get quadruple mint flavoured Oreo, or triple mint and vanilla flavoured Oreo tyres, hmmmmm!
Just as long as they turn the Ferrari into a Candy Cane for the last race of the season….
October 9th, 2008 at 4:00 pmLinks for 8 October 2008 to 9 October 2008 » vee8 - a Formula 1 blog said:
[...] We Only Get Judged by What We Do - SidepodcastSidepodcast on the green tyre markings: "Sometimes I feel sorry for the Bridgestone Corporation. Ever since the FIA opened the tender process to be Formula 1’s single tyre supplier, their marketing department have been struggling to keep the black and round things at the forefront of our minds, and in most cases they’ve failed." [...]
October 9th, 2008 at 7:46 pmSteven Roy said:
I think all that is missing is diagonal cut grooves.
October 9th, 2008 at 10:58 pmAlex Andronov said:
Totally off topic but Jordan is right: Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” is a tune!