Friday Bridgestone press release - 10th June 22:58pm GMT

Bridgestone Motorsport’s teams have had a busy first day of running at the 4.361km Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, Canada. The track surface has recently been resurfaced making it one of the smoothest tracks on the F1 calendar so Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro, Jordan Grand Prix andMinardi F1 have been concentrating hard on assessing their two tyre choices ahead of tomorrow
morning’s decision deadline. They also have to bear in mind that on a circuit which is not frequently used, conditions may well continue to change over the weekend.

Hisao Suganuma, Bridgestone Motorsport Technical Manager:
“The new track surface wasquite dusty this morning and although tyre performance was reasonable, it did mean that the cars were sliding a lot. This also continued through to the second session and consequently we did see some tyre graining today. However, we believe that as the circuit cleans up and as more rubber is laid down, the graining should reduce. Meanwhile, the teams have also been working on their car set-ups for this race and once we have checked the tyres which were used today we shall be making our recommendations in order to assist them further.”

The Teams
Ross Brawn, Technical Director of Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro:
“We had a relatively trouble free practice today. Rubens wasn’t happy with the brakes on his car, especially at a circuit like this one where it can cause problems so we’ll have to fix that. But we did some race runs and picked up all the data for the tyres so we can look at all the figures tonight, the wear rates etc, so we can make our decision. There was some graining on one of the tyres but we have to decide if it’s something which by Sunday will come back.”