Now let me get this straight, Goodyear is losing it's monopoly on supplying tyres to F1 teams, and they're happy about it. They've gone nearly 100 races without being defeated, and they welcome a challenger? F1 has been Goodyear's exclusive domain since 1992, but having a monopoly means no publicity. Since Pirelli left at the end of 1991, there has been no reason to even talk about tyres -- all the cars are on Goodyear (end of story).The 1997 F1 season promises to change all that.

If there's one thing that we can learn from the two years of tyre wars in Indycar racing, it's that Bridgestone are serious about what they are doing. Badged as Firestones, the Japanese rubber giant won in their first year of competing with Goodyear. In fact, Indycar insiders gave Firestone the nod as the better tyre on superspeedways -- witness Scott Pruett's Michigan 500 win along with Parker Johnstone's pole there the day before. Not a bad achievement for their first year back in Indycars.

In 1996 Firestone became the dominant tyre in Indycar racing, winning the first four races and taking all but the four races won by Michael Andretti -- a total of 12 wins out of 16 races. The only bump in the road experienced by Firestone was the performance of their rain tyres. In Detroit, qualifying was dry producing the usual Firestone crowd qualifying in the front. But, the race was run in the wet and that's what exposed Firestone's Achilles heel. Their rain tyres were virtually untested, so as the race wore on all the Firestone runners were passed by a procession of Goodyear shod cars.

Early indications are that the reverse may be true should there be a wet race this season in F1. Oliver Panis' results from Barcelona in the wet seem to suggest that Bridgestone has learned from their mistake in Indycars and has put extra emphasis on developing a wet weather tyre. If Panis' times are legitimate, and I see no reason why they shouldn't be, the Bridgestones are lapping seconds quicker than Goodyear. Could make for an interesting result should there be a fully wet race.

Firestone had the opportunity to do tyre testing for a full year with Patrick racing before they entered competition. It was, in my opinion, strange that Goodyear would allow that to happen, but it certainly didn't happen in F1. Early in the '96 season Goodyear stopped providing the Arrows team with tyres for testing as it was rumoured that new Arrows boss Tom Walkinshaw had signed with Bridgestone. Walkinshaw was in the unique situation of not being able to test on the same tyres he raced on. Consequently, development work on the Arrows was severely curtailed. Basically, any chassis improvements were "untestable" because Bridgestone tyres react differently than Goodyear.

The FIA has already put their stamp on the impending tyre war by limiting the number of sets of dry weather tyres available to a team on a Grand Prix weekend. Their fears are threefould. Firstly, they don't want to have anything to do with "super sticky" so-called qualifying tyres as they'll only serve to bring lap times down, and costs up. Secondly, by increasing grip, you increase speed making the sport more dangerous for the drivers. Lastly, the softer the compound available to the teams, the more rubber will be deposited off-line thus making passing even harder. It was suggested mid-season that the FIA might put tyre supply for F1 out to tender, thus maintaining a monopoly. But, that idea was soon dropped as most front running teams have signed contracts with Goodyear. It would be incredibly expensive to "buy-out" should Bridgestone land the contract.

There are many variables that will come with the impending tyre war in F1. For instance, it will now be an issue which rubber compound the tyre companies come to the racetrack with. We can also now add tyres to the never ending number of variables brought up in the age old "my favorite driver is better than yours" debate. One thing's for sure, we will be paying a lot more attention to where the rubber meets the road.