01/07/2005
NEWS STORY
It was business as usual today at the 4.411km Magny-Cours circuit in central France with Bridgestone Motorsport’s three teams busy preparing themselves for the weekend ahead. The French Grand Prix marks the half way point of the 19-race calendar and the circuit has several slow speed corners requiring good rear traction. The Ferrari, Jordan and Minardi drivers spent today’s two, one-hour long sessions assessing their car set-ups and tyre specifications in conditions which were warm but dry after last night’s torrential rain which resulted in a green but improving track.
Hisao Suganuma, Bridgestone Motorsport Technical Manager: "The track was quite green this morning which resulted in poor grip conditions and we noticed many of the cars struggling with understeer. We could also see some front tyre graining but as normal the situation improved through the afternoon session when the tyres started to work better. We did some long distance runs in the second session and now we just need to check the tyres for wear, blisters and so forth to make sure there aren’t any problems and that they are durable enough. Once this is done we can make our recommendations as usual this evening to the teams."
Ross Brawn, Technical Director of Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro: "Quite encouraging for overall lap times but we haven’t quite found a good balance yet so we’ll be making a few changes on the car to try to improve that. There’s also a little too much understeer but it’s reasonably encouraging because once we’ve fixed that I think we’ll be quite competitive this weekend."