Bridgestone Japanese GP Friday Review

By Bridgestone
October 2 2009

 
 Bridgestone Japanese GP Friday Practice
 

Bridgestone's intermediate tyre was the fastest rubber on Formula One's return to the challenging and technical Suzuka Circuit as Vodafone McLaren Mercedes driver Heikki Kovalainen set the fastest lap on the first day of the Japanese Grand Prix.

Bridgestone TyresThe morning practice, when Kovalainen set his time, took place on a wet but drying circuit. In the afternoon, continuous rain meant that only the final 30 minutes saw timed laps and only Bridgestone's wet tyre was used. Adrian Sutil (Force India F1 Team) was the fastest driver. Not all drivers completed timed laps.

Q&A with Hirohide Hamashima - Bridgestone Director of Motorsport Tyre Development

What was significant about today's running?
"Today we have learnt that our latest specification intermediate tyre works very well here. This tyre stood up well for around 20 laps when used on a drying track. The rain through most of the second session meant no running took place for the first hour. This makes the weekend very interesting as the teams have no data from the dry tyres today."

How do you expect the allocation to work over the weekend?
"Any data learnt from this morning using the wet and intermediate tyres will be lost in translation for using the dry tyres if the weather is better tomorrow. If it is wet then we will have a very interesting day as the grid could be determined by a wet qualifying session. If it is dry it will also be very interesting as the teams will have to learn the hard and soft tyre performance with only limited track time. This gives the teams a big challenge, not just for qualifying but also for Sunday's race."

  
Stats of the Day:
Practice One 10:00 - 11:30: 
Driver 		   Team			Time 	    Tyre 
Heikki Kovalainen  Vodafone McLaren     1m 40.356s  I
Kazuki Nakajima    AT&T Williams   	1m 40.648s  I
Adrian Sutil       Force India F1 Team  1m 40.806s  I 

Practice Two 14:00 - 15:30
Driver 		  Team			Time 	    Tyre
Adrian Sutil 	  Force India F1 Team 	1m 47.261s  W
Sebastian Vettel  Red Bull Racing 	1m 47.923s  W
Vitantonio Liuzzi Force India F1 Team 	1m 47.931s  W

Compounds used: Intermediate / Wet

Temperatures 	 Ambient      Track    	Weather
AM - Practice 1  22C-21C-22C 23C 	Overcast
PM - Practice 2  22C 	     23C 	Rain / drizzle
 

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Bridgestone Japanese GP Friday Review
Discussion started by Williams F1 , 02/10/2009 13:05
Williams F1
02/10/2009 13:05
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pgj
02/10/2009 15:18
All teams were reporting excessive front tyre wear after FP1. They are so badly worn that they are useless for any other session. There is general concern about tyre wear regardless of whether wet or dry tyres are used. Ferrari said that after five laps they had no front end.

Williams and proud of it.

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crusty_bread
02/10/2009 15:33
Interesting. I wonder where we stand? Rosberg has been very good at managing tyres this year- eg Hungary, but in general, Im not sure how good the FW31 is. We have taken very cautious strategies in the past based on our softer compound tyre-wear rates, which doesn't fill me with confidence.

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tomazy
02/10/2009 15:51
Quote:
Nico Rosberg, P1 - 1:42.188, 10th; P2 - 1:49.872, 16th
“Today was just a matter of trying out the tyres in order to get an understanding of where the change over points are and how the inters and full wets are working, degradation-wise. What was clear was that I pretty much destroyed the wets when the track dried out. With the information from both cars, we now have a good understanding of what is going on.”

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pgj
02/10/2009 16:27
Let's hope they do. The problem seems to be with the new surface that on the track. It is nothing like Barca when oils were seeping out of the new track surface but it does seem to be that it is a very abrasive surface.

Williams and proud of it.

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