Ooooh, the pips must be squeaking in Motorsport (as well as bikesport) with news that Japanese super-corporation (is it a zaibatsu?) will pull out of F1 racing at the end of next season.

Bridgestone Motorsport director Hiroshi Yasukawa said in a statement: "The decision made by the board of directors comes after considerable and lengthy evaluations and has been based on the company's need to redirect its resources towards further intensive development of innovative technologies." Uh-huh. What this presumably means is that Bridgestone has finally realised its costing it millions of Yen for no appreciable increase in tyre sales and that the brand awareness has peaked. Plus, they're probably embarrassed by Max Moseley's bedroom antics as well as Lil' Bernie's megalomania.

Bridgestone had been in F1 since 1997 and had been the sole supplier since the beginning of the 2007 season when Michelin pulled out, making the F1 championship a single-make tyre series.

Bridgestone's contract to supply tyres to the MotoGP grid runs out at the end of 2011, but it would be interesting to know the difference in the cost of supplying F1 compared to MotoGP. We reckon that it's a bit cheaper to work with the bikes – there's only two tyres for a start...