Bridgestone Motorsport’s four
teams: Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro, Sauber Petronas, Jordan
Ford and Wilux Minardi Cosworth; have been hard at work on day one
of the British Grand
Prix. Despite weather forecasts to the contrary, the teams enjoyed
two, dry one-hour sessions and spent this time evaluating their
two tyre choices and setting their cars up for the forthcoming Grand
Prix. Last year’s British GP winner Rubens Barrichello set
the fastest time of 1m19.138s in the first of the day’s sessions
with teammate Michael Schumacher and Sauber’s Felipe Massa
and Giancarlo Fisichella joining him in the top ten. However, it
was Fisichella who went on to set the fastest Bridgestone time of
the day with a 1m18.660s which was just 0.005 seconds off the overall
fastest time set by Kimi Raikkonen. The Sauber pair look set to
be a force to contend with this weekend.
Hisao
Suganuma, Bridgestone Motorsport Technical Manager:
“We had two dry sessions today and all our teams
have tried both their tyre specifications. The Bridgestone runners
have been setting competitive and consistent times although the
track was still green. The Saubers in particular look strong this
weekend. So now we will evaluate all the tyres and the data from
today’s running before advising our teams which of their two
specifications we recommend for qualifying and the race on Sunday.
But so far, we look in good shape.”
The
Teams
Ross
Brawn, Technical Director of Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro:
“We’re a little back to front because we ran
on fresh tyres this morning and stayed on the used tyres this afternoon
because the forecast was for bad weather – which doesn’t
seem to have come. So we’re a bit out of line with the other
cars but the car’s handling reasonably well and as always,
we’ve got plenty of data on the tyres so we’ll look
through that this evening. The Bridgestone tyres seem nice and consistent
so I think we’re going to have a good race on Sunday.” |
