Bridgestone “Pleased” with Belgian F1 Practice Session

Bridgestone director of motorsport tyre development, Hirohide Hamashima declared himself “pleased” following Friday’s practice sessions for the Belgian Grand Prix at the undulating Spa Francorchamps circuit. He stated that the unexpected morning showers were “good for Bridgestone as we could evaluate the performance of our latest specification intermediate tyre relative to the wet tyre. We are pleased to say our initial performance feedback and data has been as anticipated.”

When the clouds cleared for the afternoon session, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time, though the afternoon was more notable for its projection of a potentially close race, with the top 18 cars separated by under a second. Jarno Trulli of Panasonic Toyota Racing was the fastest driver in the morning practice session, setting a time of 1min 49.675secs on the medium compound tyre. Most of the morning session was run in wet conditions, meaning that Bridgestone’s intermediate and wet tyres were used for the first time since its latest specification intermediate was introduced.

Hamashima concluded his Q&A, saying, “Spa is an interesting circuit and its characteristics mean that both tyres work well, even though they have different temperature working ranges. Because of this we saw that the medium and soft tyres delivered very close fastest lap times, and most of the field was very close together. We expect to see more tyre evaluation take place tomorrow. We did hear different driver comments relating to the feeling from the tyres, and this is a circuit where driver confidence is very important. We didn’t see graining on either compound so this highlights that both tyres could deliver strong performance if we have a dry race.”