Bridgestone's soft tyre took Red Bull Racing's Mark Webber to the fastest time on the initial day of running for the first ever Korean Grand Prix.

Webber set a 1min 37m 942secs lap time midway through the afternoon practice session at the newly constructed Korean International Circuit located in Yeongam, approximately 400km south of the South Korean capital of Seoul.


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

What was significant about today's running?
"Today was significant as after much speculation we finally started the Grand Prix weekend at this fantastic new Formula 1 venue. As expected, the track surface started exceptionally slippery but we saw a phenomenal amount of track surface evolution through today's sessions. The first lap of the day was over 2minutes 20 seconds, the last one was more than 42 seconds faster than that. I believe there is still potential for further track improvement tomorrow, especially if the weather remains dry and warm like today."

How do you expect this allocation to work over the weekend?
"This is a tricky question and I don't think we can give a definitive answer. We saw a lot of graining on both compounds front and rear today. This is related to the dirty surface as the tyres cannot grip the tarmac properly. This situation should continue to improve with the track surface evolution tomorrow. We expect that the option tyre should give a faster lap time and if the surface continues to improve it should have reasonable durability. How much durability depends on the track surface evolution so this will be the crucial question for the next two days."

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Stats of the Day:
Practice One 10:00 - 11:30: 
Driver 		   Team			Time 	    Tyre 
Lewis Hamilton     Vodafone McLaren 	1m 40.887s  H
Robert Kubica 	   Renault F1 Team 	1m 40.968s  H
Nico Rosberg 	   Mercedes GP 		1m 41.152s  H
 

Practice Two 14:00 - 15:30
Driver 		   Team			Time 	    Tyre
Mark Webber 	   Red Bull Racing 	1m 37.942s  S
Fernando Alonso    Scuderia Ferrari	1m 38.132s  S
Lewis Hamilton     Vodafone McLaren	1m 38.279s  S

Compounds used: Hard (prime) / Soft (option)

Temperatures 	 Ambient   Track   	Weather
AM - Practice 1  18C - 21C 23C - 30C    Sunny
PM - Practice 2  22C - 21C 32C - 28C    Sunny / Cloudy