09/09/2005
NEWS STORY
Day one of the Belgian Grand Prix weekend lived up to the famous Spa circuit's reputation with damp and cloudy conditions in the morning turning to torrential rain for the second practice session. The Bridgestone equipped runners all went out in the latter half of the first session on dry tyres with the exception of Jordan's Friday test driver Nicolas Kiesa, who ran on standard wet tyres. The second session, however, was a wash-out with only Minardi's Robert Doornbos of the Bridgestone runners completing an installation lap on extreme wet tyres. The session was red flagged within the first five minutes after Vitantonio Liuzzi spun off and although his car was soon cleared, only one other runner completed a lap, the remainder preferring to stay in their garages. Teams will be permitted to test both their dry tyre specifications tomorrow if dry as both of today's sessions were declared wet.
Hisao Suganuma, Bridgestone Motorsport Technical Manager: "We had a damp track this morning. The Bridgestone teams did go out on dry tyres in the latter half of the session but they got insufficient running for a proper assessment. There was torrential rain in the second session so there was no real running. We are hoping for dry sessions tomorrow so we can complete our dry tyre assessments but if not, we shall use the data from our test sessions prior to coming to Spa. Unfortunately, however, there is a high chance of rain."
Ross Brawn, Technical Director of Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro: "Just a short run in the dry this morning. The car was reasonably well balanced although it had a bit too much understeer. We made some adjustments but were not able to check them this afternoon. It looks like it will be a mixed weekend weather wise so we'll need to think how to approach it. Hopefully we'll get an apportunity to check the tyres tomorrow."