Bridgestone 2nd & 3rd in Friday Japanese practice

The Japanese Grand Prix weekend started with heavy rain this morning with just eleven of the drivers setting a time in the first practice session. Six of the eleven were Bridgestone runners from the WilliamsF1, Spyker MF1 and Super Aguri F1 teams. The afternoon session was a more productive practice with the initial wet conditions drying out as the clouds cleared, enabling the teams to run on their dry weather specifications for the first time this weekend. Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro's Felipe Massa and Michael Schumacher were second and third fastest respectively while Panasonic Toyota Racing's drivers, Jarno Trulli and Ralf Schumacher were next up for Bridgestone. Despite the wet start to the weekend the weather forecast is for improved conditions over the next couple of days.

Hisao Suganuma, Bridgestone Motorsport Technical Manager, said: "The weather was not good today with heavy rain falling this morning and although it did reduce a bit during the first practice the track was covered with a lot of water. The Bridgestone runners therefore started on extreme wet tyres before then changing to the standard wets. The extreme wet performance was pretty good although conditions were not quite right for the standard wet tyre. As the track began to dry up in the second practice session however the standard wet started to perform well.

Towards the end of the session the track was dry enough to run on the dry tyres and although some teams only managed to run on one of their two specifications, others tried both. The dry tyres for this race immediately showed good initial performance but it will be difficult to make a final decision from those few laps. We shall most likely confirm the choices with the teams after Saturday's morning practice session. We did see some graining on the front left dry tyres but this was due to the green track conditions after the rain and we are expecting the track conditions to settle down over the weekend."