As the sun set over Silverstone, Ralf Schumacher was the only driver still on the circuit, stubbornly pursuing perfection His elder brother would have approved But he wasn’t doing it for his elder brother.. It’s a simple tradition in Formula One: tyres are “round, black and boring”, end of story. As Goodyear discovered back in 1986 when the explosion of one of their products cost Nigel Mansell the world championship, the only time they are news is when they go wrong. But this year the subject of tyres has thrown the sport a much- needed talking point to sustain interest at a time when races were in danger of becoming predictable. A Williams-Renault would win, you just had to guess which driver. Now, that may all change thanks to a declaration of war on the former monopoly holder Goodyear by the Japanese giants Bridgestone, who will enjoy the added bonus of having the world champion Damon Hill racing on their products.

Indeed, as far as Hill is concerned, Bridgestone are a potential trump card that could help him vault his TWR Arrows Yamaha past many more-fancied runners.
Pre-season hyperbole? Possibly not, for the French driver Olivier Panis has been setting remarkably fast lap times in the Prost (formerly Ligier) throughout the winter, and Goodyear and their runners have been paying very close attention. When Bridgestone took on Goodyear in the CART series for Indianapolis-type cars in America, the results were explosive.”Our target this year is to make sure that we have the right structure to support Formula One,” Hirohide Hamashima, Bridgestone’s manager of international motorsports, said. “We must make sure that we have the right logistics and service as well as performance. If we perform reasonably at each grand prix, we shall be very happy.”Not exactly overly-optimistic stuff, for that is the Japanese way. Mention what everyone else is talking about – the likelihood of victory – and Hamashima laughs coyly and concedes: “Yes. that would be nice!” But below the surface Bridgestone are very confident.If they are maintaining a diplomatic silence, others are doing the talking for them “I think the Bridgestones are great,” Hill said.

He tried the tyres at Suzuka at the end of last season on an elderly Ligier, and set a time which would have been good enough for fourth place on the grid for last year’s Japanese GP. “There is every chance that Goodyear could end up with some red faces,” Hill added.Goodyear have so far contented themselves with intensive development, and their UK racing manager, Tony Shakespeare, said: “We are just going to do what we have to, and will continue making the best products we can to keep winning.”After all the hype the tyre situation will become a great deal clearer when reality imposes itself in Melbourne next week. Goodyear have only raced there once before, as the Grand Prix switched to the venue from Adelaide last year, so Bridgestone will be at less of a disadvantage on their debut.Hill’s team boss, Tom Walkinshaw, is ebullient about Arrows’ prospects with Bridgestone. “I believe that in 50 per cent of the races there will be little or nothing to choose,” he says, “and that in the other 50 per cent there will be quite a dramatic performance advantage swing.” With the field split evenly between the rivals, that could throw up surprises.A tyre war is often a tedious screen that obscures the true pecking order but right now, for Formula One, it is a godsend.. British athletics this week strikes out on the long road to recovery from its squabbles and scandals and steady decline in popularity. The first positive step was taken when the new British Athletes’ Association had a say in the selection of the team for the world indoor championships which start in Paris on Friday. That helped overcome the usual bickering over controversial decisions, but the amicable arrangement cannot disguise the urgent need for new stars.

The team was originally considered so strong that it could afford to do without both an athlete who recently beat a world champion and another who was fourth in last year’s Olympic Games, which serves to show the weight of confidence and reflects a healthy depth of talent. That certainly seemed to be the message sent out when Britain announced that their 400 metres entry was so powerful that Guy Bullock, who beat the world indoor champion, Darnell Hall, comfortably last week would only have a relay place. Until her appeal, Ashia Hansen was not even considered for the triple jump because she failed to appear in the trials. Fortunately for Hansen the British Athletic Federation yesterday reversed their decision and added her name to the team, after citing the “exceptional circumstances” that there was some doubt whether she had received the correspondence outlining the selection procedures.
But the theory put forward by some coaches that Britain is on the verge of producing a whole new generation of top-class athletes needs to be tested. Not that the team can do much worse than come home with the one silver and one bronze achieved in Barcelona two years ago. Above all, the newcomers are going to gain by the experience of international competition.The largest British team ever to compete at this event (originally 40, but now without Diane Modahl who is suffering stress as a result of her on-going conflict with the BAF) may have had some input from their new own association, but the BAA are still concerned that the crisis-hit federation may yet refuse to let the influence of the athletes grow much further in the restructuring of the sport. A week after the world indoor championships, the BAF council meet to take the next step in replacing the executive chairman, Peter Radford.