The majority of the fitting of the dry and wet tyres happens on the Wednesday and Thursday. Due to the need to receive tyre deliveries in normal working hours, Bridgestone’s fitting staff will work normal day time hours until Thursday, when they will switch to a later work schedule, arriving on track late in the afternoon and working into the night in line with Singapore’s night race start times for the weekend’s activities.

And as if the tyre fitters’ jobs were not lengthy enough, Bridgestone would normally mark the softer of the two dry tyre compounds and the extreme wet tyres with a white line. This would be done at the final stage of the fitting process when the tyres are being balanced. As a tyre spins round, a white line is painted in the second from inside groove, the aim being to increase the public and media’s understanding of what tyre strategies teams have employed. However, as the tyres for Singapore will use a special reflective paint, for better visibility in the night lights, they have been prepared in Japan prior to shipping.

Once the weekend running starts on Friday however, the routine changes and Bridgestone’s engineers and technicians turn their attention to closely monitoring their tyres. Bridgestone engineers and technicians work with each team in the garages and note temperatures and pressures, while others are on standby in the fitting area, ready for any last minute work.

After the race has been completed, all the tyres are then stripped from their rims. Some of the tyres will be sent to Japan for further analysis, whilst the remainder will be sent to the UK warehouse before being scrapped and burnt as fuel, making a positive contribution to energy recovery.