Mark Hughes: F1's Inside Line

So far this year there have been three drivers - Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen and Robert Kubica - who have performed less well than expected against their respective team-mates. It's not a coincidence that they are all new to Bridgestone tyres and their team-mates all either have previous Bridgestone experience or, in the case of Lewis Hamilton, no Michelin experience to unlearn.

At Barcelona Alonso spoke a little about his continuing learning process: "After the second race I was thinking that I now understood the tyres and the car. At Malaysia I felt I was driving with more comfort, that I knew what I was doing more. But then we arrived here last week to test and I learned so many more things about the tyres - about their characteristics in the long runs, about their first lap performance, everything.

"I'm still learning more and more about the reaction of the car and the tyres - and I can see now it's going to take more time to be 100 per cent confident. I thought I knew where I was, but have just discovered I still had more to learn."

One of the most significant differences between these tyres and the Michelins most of the field were previously on is the slip angle at which the rears give their best performance. Their construction means they work best with around five degrees of slip - ie with the car sliding to that angle.

This is significantly higher than with the old Michelins. For the aerodynamicists there has been the challenge of making sure the aero works best at the same slip angles that the tyres do. But for drivers the relearning process has been even trickier.

"The Bridgestone is a tyre with a more progressive performance curve," says one engineer. "Which sounds like it would make it easier, but it doesn't. All it means is that it's not as easy to know which part of that curve you're on. Are you at its peak or not?

"With the Michelin it was much easier to know when you were on that peak because it was more switch-like. If a driver doesn't have the intrinsic feel combined with a knowledge of the Bridgestone, you are going to struggle with it."

Our technical consultant, Gary Anderson, has worked with both tyres and has also spent some time this year watching out on track - and he has noticed very clearly the distinction between Raikkonen and Felipe Massa.

"When you put a new set of tyres on, yes you always tend to pick up a bit of understeer. You watch Massa and he drives to that understeer. He can obviously feel roughly where the peak of the tyre is, recognises when he's not going to get any more from it - and doesn't ask any more of it. He just waits patiently for that phase to end, keeps it neat and tidy, then carries on.

"You watch Kimi and he's just not tuned into it yet. He's probably not feeling that peak, because it's a much more rounded peak. So instead he refuses to accept the understeer. What he tries to do instead is pitch the car to combat it. Which sometimes works, but you can't get it to do that every corner of every lap."

Alonso was fantastic in how he was able to make aggressive use of the Michelin front's very sharply defined peak. He would commit to it, ask everything of it. His sharp steering input was perfectly matched to the sharp performance curve of the tyre. He asked a lot and it responded to this.

When he tries the same thing now with the Bridgestone, it's overwhelmed and just moves gently onto a slightly lower part of its curve. It's not quite so bad for him on a new set when the peak is slightly more sharply defined - and it's probably significant that in qualifying he's still managed to retain a small edge over Lewis Hamilton in the season to date.

Kubica's style is remarkably similar to Alonso's - and hence he too is looking less convincing this year than last. He too has a team-mate, in this case Nick Heidfeld, with extensive experience of driving on Bridgestones.

Up at Honda Rubens Barrichello, with years of Bridgestone experience, is looking a lot more comfortable relative to team-mate Jenson Button than was the case last year when, coming in the other direction - Bridgestone to Michelin - he initially struggled badly.

His engineer, Jock Clear, says: "I think there is still a great underestimation, even among technical departments, of just how big a deal the driver being intimately familiar with the tyre is. It can easily take the best part of a season for even a top driver to adapt to - especially when he's being measured against a guy who already has that experience."

It all underlines just how meshed car and driver have to be today - more than ever before. It's a trend that extends beyond just tyres. Take, for example, the implications of the anti-lock systems in the engine software. They prevent the rear wheels from locking through too high a torque reversal during downchanges. Sounds like nothing the driver need worry about, right? Wrong.

"The driver needs to let the brakes do most of the work," says Anderson, "and only then begin changing down. A lot of guys like to begin changing down as soon as they start braking. This is not a good idea with the anti-locking systems because it completely screws the car's aero on corner entry.

"The reason it does this is because when the system comes in it's releasing some of the wheel braking force to stop the engine braking from locking it up. When you release the wheel braking force you're not going through the suspension's anti-dive geometry, so the back of the car comes up. Which then screws up the airflow just when you need it to be working for you."

When you get into this level of detail it becomes clear that 'I'm still not understanding the car fully' is not just a lame excuse. But it has, quite by accident, helped set up a very intriguing championship battle between two teams who can't work out who their number one driver really is.