Bridgestone Announces Tyre Allocations for F1 Opening Trio

Bridgestone has announced its Potenza tyre compound allocations for the first three rounds of the 2010 FIA Formula One World Championship. The supplier will provide super soft and medium compounds for the Bahrain Grand Prix at Sakhir, with soft and hard compounds set for Melbourne and Sepang at the Australian and Malaysian legs. The first three races see the return of Bridgestone’s challenge to teams in including two non-consecutive compounds, exploiting the FIA’s regulation that teams must use both compounds during races. This season will be the second with slick tyres, which made a return to Formula One last year after an eleven years absence from the sport. All four dry compounds have also been modified from those used last year.

Bridgestone said there are two distinct temperature working ranges of tyres. The hard and medium variations have a higher temperature working range than the soft and super soft. In a change to the regulations, the number of sets of dry tyres available for each driver at a Grand Prix changes from seven of each compound to six of the harder ‘prime’ compound and five of the softer ‘option’ compound. Helping spectators to distinguish between the two compounds will be green bands painted on the edges of the tyre sidewalls of the softer tyres at a race. The wet tyre also has a green line at the bottom of the central groove. These markings allow the compounds to be visually distinguishable by fans at the circuit and those watching on television. The green colour, says Bridgestone, represents the company’s continued support of the FIA’s Make Cars Green campaign.

Hirohide Hamashima, Bridgestone head of motorsport tyre development, says: “Tyre strategy will be very important in 2010 as there is no longer refuelling which was previously a big factor in determining when pit stops would occur. We have changed all our dry compounds for this season, as the cars will be heavier and the stint lengths could be longer. We have also made changes to enable quicker warm-up times. We will bring harder tyres to Australia than we did last season, but the compound allocation positions for Bahrain and Malaysia are the same as they were in 2009.

“There will be a big challenge for teams this season on how they use their tyres as they have fewer sets of dry tyres available than before, particularly with the softer tyre at each race. We are happy to continue to show our support of the FIA’s Make Cars Green campaign with the green markings on our tyres and we look forward to what should be a very exciting start to the season in Bahrain.”