Reflective paint for night race tyres

Bridgestone is planning to use special reflective paint to distinguish its tyres in the night race at Singapore, autosport.com has learned

Formula One rules require that the two different types of tyres available at a race will be visibly different, with the softer of the compounds at each race painted with a white line at the bottom of one of the grooves.

Bridgestone has been evaluating what to do in Singapore, where the dark conditions could make it more difficult to distinguish the two tyres.

And although there had been talk of using flourescent colours at the event, Bridgestone has settled on using more reflective white paint.

"The ratio of reflection in the paint will be a bit higher than the current one," Bridgestone's director of motor sport tyre development Hirohide Hamashima said when asked by autosport.com about his plans.

"The paint used will be different. It will be similar to what is used on the white lines on the road, which reflect a lot. We will use those ingredients."

Bridgestone is also still evaluating how to mark next year's slick tyres differently - with its current favourite solution being to paint the sidewalls.

"It could be the sidewall, but with the super soft, soft, medium and hard tyres - so four different types of sidewall, it is very difficult," explained Hamashima.

"We are still trying things on the machine at the moment, so in September we will decide the final design."

Hamashima ruled out using different colours to distinguish the tyres, with tests having shown that using any colour other than white is not effective when the cars are at speed.