Bridgestone Motorsport had a positive start to its 2006 F1 campaign today at the Bahrain International Circuit as all five of its teams (Ferrari, Toyota, WilliamsF1, MF1 and Super Aguri) took to the track for the first practice sessions of the year. After a long winter of testing it was the first real opportunity for teams to see just how well their development has progressed since the previous season. For the Super Aguri team, in particular, it was a momentous day having built a team in little over three months.

The majority of today's running was conducted by those teams with third drivers while this morning's dirty track conditions also resulted in most teams concentrating on the afternoon session. WilliamsF1's third driver, Alex Wurz, ran the most number of laps of the Bridgestone runners, finishing the respective
sessions with the second and third fastest times. Ferrari's Michael Schumacher and Felipe Massa also both posted strong times. Saturday morning's practice session will continue to reveal the remainder of the jigsaw puzzle as tyre choices no longer have to be made on Friday night and we can expect further potential to be shown tomorrow. Teams still have Saturday's session to finalise their tyre choices and set-ups before making final decisions ahead of the afternoon qualifying session.

Bridgestone Results:

1st Practice: 2nd A Wurz 1:32.184, 4th M Schumacher 1:33.469, 8th F Massa 1:34.925, 13th T Monteiro 1:36.542, 14th C Albers 1:36.930, 15th M Winkelhock 1:37.918, 16th T Sato 1:38.190, 17th Y Ide 1:40.782, 21st J Trulli (no time), 22nd R Schumacher (no time)

2nd Practice: 2nd M Schumacher 1:31.751, 3rd A Wurz 1:31.764, 4th F Massa 1:32.175, 17th M Webber 1:34.333, 20th T Monteiro 1:34.459, 21st N Rosberg 1:34.953, 22nd R Schumacher 1:35.170, 23rd M Winkelhock 1:35.686, 24th J Trulli 1:35.898, 26th C Albers 1:36.314, 27th T Sato 1:37.588, 28th Y Ide 1:39.021

Hisao Suganuma, Bridgestone Motorsport Technical Manager, said: "It was great to finally see all the Bridgestone cars running at the first race weekend of the season. We had no unexpected surprises and we are pleased with the information we've gathered today. Naturally some teams chose not to run much in the morning. The track conditions were green but we did get some useful data from this morning and did not suffer excessive graining which is a good sign. The afternoon session saw a lot more activity as the track had rubbered in, enabling the teams to start their long run comparisons between their chosen two specifications.

We shall now take this data and look at it closely overnight ahead of tomorrow's final practice session, after which our teams need to make their tyre choices. All in all, it has been a good first day of running with some strong performances between the Bridgestone teams. On a final note we should congratulate the Super Aguri team for getting two cars out there today, an incredible achievement in such a short amount of time."