08/07/2005
NEWS STORY
The Bridgestone Motorsport teams: Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro, Jordan Grand Prix and the Minardi F1 Team; were hard at work today on day one of the British Grand Prix, laying the foundations for the weekend ahead. Each driver has to test their two specifications of tyre available and by early Saturday morning has to nominate which to use for the remainder of the race weekend. Ferrari's drivers Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello generally used today's sessions for long runs, assessing the consistency of their tyres, and they will then spend tomorrow's sessions fine tuning their car set-ups for the weekend.
Hisao Suganuma, Bridgestone Motorsport Technical Manager: As is normal on a Friday we had a green track this morning resulting in poor grip but track conditions have been improving as the day has progressed. We did see some graining in the first practice but that is mainly a result of the green track. Our teams were able to carry out their tyre comparisons today and Ferrari did a long run tyre comparison this afternoon which has shown both their specifications to be competitive. We'll be taking the teams' data this evening and once we have assessed the tyres and their wear rates, we'll be in a better position to advise our teams about their final tyre choice for the weekend.
Ross Brawn, Technical Director of Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro: The second session was better as we didn't have very good balance in this morning's session but the engineers did a good job. We had good balance in the second session and the long runs were good. We changed the way we ran the tyre programme today, because we don't have much experience with these new tyres. We ran the new sets in parallel which effectively meant we didn't run new sets this afternoon. We're happy with the times over a long run and the tyres are consistent. There was a little graining initially but I don't think that will be there on Sunday so now we just have to decide which tyre to use.