Brawn: move to 'control tyre' will backfire

The majority of teams pushed for the change to the tyre regulations at last week's Formula One Commission meeting ahead of Bridgestone becoming F1's only tyre supplier in 2007.

The teams wanted to do away with the option of F1's tyre suppliers providing different specification tyres for each team because there were fears that Ferrari could have an advantage due to their long-standing relationship with Bridgestone.

The Japanese tyre manufacturer will now only provide two different types of tyres for the entire grid.

The plans were met with bitter resistance from Ferrari, Williams and Toyota - all of whom believe that the move is wrong, but were voted through anyway.

Brawn is convinced, however, that rather than making the tyre situation more even for the teams, the narrowing of the tyre options will actually lead to more complaints next season about equality, because the tyres brought to races will almost certainly not suit some teams.

"I think people forget that a couple of years ago, when the tyres were all the same, there were a lot of arguments about which tyres had been selected for a weekend because they favoured one team or another," said Brawn.

"At that stage it was the regulation that they all had to be the same, and I remember when the rule was changed (to allow bespoke tyres), it was seen as a positive move because then the teams could have compounds that suited their cars.

"Now, those same teams think it is a negative move that they can have compounds to suit their own cars.

"Let's not forget the arguments that reigned when Bridgestone bought two tyres and some teams claimed those tyres favoured Ferrari or McLaren or whoever they favoured, and they were not suitable for their cars."

Brawn added: "If you have got a car that can use soft compounds then you should be able to pick soft compounds, but if you have got a car that is more aggressive on the tyres then maybe you need to pick harder compounds.

"You could have a range of four or six compounds that the teams can pick from, and I actually think that is a fairer situation rather than having just two compounds that every team have to use over the weekend.

"I promise you that we will be here in 12 months' time, or earlier than that, and arguing about the fact that so and so says that the tyre Bridgestone have bought this weekend favour Ferrari or favour someone else."

Bridgestone technical manager Hisao Suganuma told autosport.com earlier this weekend that his company would do everything they could to try and ensure equality next year.

But Suganuma admitted there was the chance of a greater difference between cars with only two tyre types available than when where was free choice between the teams.

"The most important thing is that we have to supply a good service for all the teams, and at the moment we are discussing what is the best way to do that," said Suganuma.

"If everyone is using the same tyre then sometimes you can see a bigger gap between the top teams and the bottom teams. In terms of matching the current car and the tyres, there will be some difference between the teams.

"So what we can do is provide the same tyre for all the teams and then try to help them in how they use it, how to get the performance out of the tyre. Our engineers will need to work in a different way than this year."