20/03/2005
NEWS STORY
Bridgestone Motorsport had a challenging day at Malaysia's Sepang Circuit today, Round Two of the FIA Formula One World Championship, but came away with plenty of important data to assist future tyre development. Encouragingly, Bridgestone's tyres had proven themselves safe and durable throughout the weekend despite track temperatures in the roaring fifties. However, after disappointing qualifying sessions and race results from its runners, Bridgestone will be pushing forward with its development programme in coming weeks. Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro's Michael Schumacher fared the best of the Bridgestone runners this weekend, driving a determined race from 13th on the grid to pick up two points for a seventh place finish. Teammate Rubens Barrichello unfortunately picked up some rubber which caught in his rear wing and disturbed the balance of this car. He retired in the latter stages of the race after this imbalance caused too much wear on his rear tyres. Meanwhile, three of the four remaining Bridgestone runners from Jordan Grand Prix and Minardi F1 completed the race distance, giving the young rookies yet more important race mileage.
Hisao Suganuma – Technical Manager – Bridgestone Motorsport: Obviously we are disappointed that our tyre performance was not up to our usual high standards this weekend but we will leave Malaysia with some positive feedback which can be carried forward into our future tyre development. It is often the case when a good result has not been achieved that we gain a valuable insight into our tyre performance and this was certainly the case this weekend. Admittedly our tyre performance was not enough but we are pleased that we supplied safe tyres in extreme weather conditions. We are now looking ahead to next week's test in Mugello where we shall assess the best candidates of tyre specifications for the forthcoming Bahrain Grand Prix. We will react as quickly as possible to turn around the situation.
Ross Brawn – Technical Director – Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro: A disappointing race outcome as we were optimistic that the track might improve. Unfortunately that didn't happen. Ferrari and its partners will obviously look at what has to be done in the next few weeks because clearly we weren't good enough today. But, we've been here before and we'll probably be here again in the future and I have trust and faith in everyone around us that we can rectify the situation. We have now discovered that a piece of rubber wedged in Rubens' rear wing. That upset the balance of the car and although he persevered for a while it damaged the rear tyres. Michael did as much as we could have expected from him today. He paced himself well throughout the race, the strategy was good and he gained a couple of points which could be vital at the end of the championship.