All about Bridgestone car tyres…

It’s not just at the F1 track where you will see Bridgestone tyres. As the world’s largest tyre and rubber product manufacturer, the company has an extensive range of passenger vehicle tyres.

Bridgestone’s Formula 1 tyres come from the Potenza range, which is understandably tailored to people who love driving. A tyre from this range would suit an F1 driver who takes his performance orientated road car home after a hard day at the track.

“The Potenza tyre range meets the challenge of evolving the driving experience as well as realizing the greatest performance today,” explains Franco Annunziato, Vice President of Bridgestone Europe.

“It’s the name on Bridgestone’s Formula One tyres so it is committed to catering to the demands of those people who love driving and who continually strive to improve their driving skills – just like F1 drivers.

“Our latest road-going Potenza is the S001. This is the replacement of the very successful Potenza RE050. The S001 was launched at the beginning of this year, and embodies Formula 1 precision with superior traction and manoeuvrability. This is our flagship road tyre, just as our Potenza Formula 1 tyre is our flagship competition tyre.”

For the team boss in a luxury saloon, Bridgestone’s Turanza could be the tyre of choice. Tailored for comfortable reliability, it combines comfort, security, driving performance and advanced technology.

“Our Turanza tyre is the ER300,” explains Annunziato, “and this is focused on vehicle ride to give a superb harmony of comfort and stability. This tyre gives a smooth drive so reduces stress on a long journey and delivers premium wet handling. Any team manager who has this tyre on his road car should be well placed to make critical decisions in the pit lane.”

Should the F1 team physio decide that it’s time for an outdoor training camp, then what better tyre than the Bridgestone Dueler, which is designed for all terrain off and on road traction for 4WD vehicles.

Providing superior driving performance, comfort, and reliability to a wide variety of vehicles including pickups, SUVs (sport-utility vehicles), CUVs (cross-utility vehicles), and premium SUVs/CUVs, this is the ideal tyre for heading out for some mountain biking, altitude training or any other activities where a 4WD is used.


“The Dueler range has tyres tailored for premium sports performance, highway comfort, highway luxury and all terrain tasks and it is a popular fitment for this well used category of vehicle,” says Annunziato.

And for the off season, heading to the ski slopes seems like the natural thing for the F1 team member to do, and if you drive in winter conditions, the Blizzak range is the tyre of choice.

“Bridgestone’s Blizzak tyres are studless winter tyres which are designed to deliver safety on winter roads throughout the world,” explains Annunziato. “These tyres have optimised void and groove distribution which balances snow, wet and dry performance.

“This tyre range could be seen more in the future, especially as we have seen that even the UK, where many F1 teams are based, has experienced quite a lot of winter snow over the past couple of years.”

Bridgestone’s latest focus is its newest eco-friendly tyre, the ECOPIA EP 150. This tyre meets the challenging objective of combining top class wet safety with reduced rolling resistance, leading to higher fuel efficiency and lower CO2 emission.

Bridgestone has accomplished this breakthrough through the development of materials technology, called NanoPro-Tech, combined with a new tread design.

NanoPro-Tech is Bridgestone’s advanced technology for controlling the microstructure of materials through molecular design. This allows improvement in both rolling resistance and performance in wet conditions, which is otherwise a compromise between the two targets.”

Bridgestone’s fourteen year participation in Formula 1 has helped drive its tyre technology and evolution, bringing benefit to every Bridgestone equipped driver and passenger on the road.

“Bridgestone are proud of our motorsport and passenger vehicle tyres as they all embody our corporate slogan, Passion for Excellence,” concludes Annunziato.