Bridgestone Bahrain Grand Prix Review

Bridgestone shod Michael Schumacher came within milliseconds of winning this afternoon’s season opening grand prix in Bahrain to finish a morale boosting second to reigning world champion Fernando Alonso.

Having set the pace for much of the race Schumacher relinquished the lead after exiting from his final pit stop marginally behind the Spaniard. WilliamsF1’s drivers Mark Webber and Nico Rosberg also showed considerable potential for the season ahead with both finishing in the points.

Nico Rosberg’s seventh place finish was well earned and he set the field alight with his pace and race craft. He secured the fastest lap of the race at 1m32.408 seconds and his closing stage overtaking manoeuvre on Christian Klien marked him out as a driver to watch this year. Four of the top six fastest drivers out on track today were running on Bridgestone tyres, giving Bridgestone Motorsport high expectations for the season ahead.

Hisao Suganuma, Technical Manager of Bridgestone Motorsport, said: “This is a good way to start the season. It wasn’t a Bridgestone win and there’s always room for improvement but we are very encouraged.

It shows that our general development direction was correct over the winter and we will keep pushing to make the Bridgestone teams competitive. Michael Schumacher finished second and the two Williams drivers had strong performances. The Toyotas did struggle to use their maximum potential but we shall try to help them after analysing this weekend’s data further. It was good to see Takuma Sato bring one of the Super Aguri cars home.

The team has done exceptionally well in such a short period of time. We are pleased with the competitiveness of our tyres here, having improved our levels of grip and consistency. Four of the six fastest cars today were Bridgestone runners and that gives us plenty of encouragement for the long season ahead.”

Bridgestone Team News:

Ross Brawn, Technical Director – Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro: “It’s obviously very frustrating to come so close to winning but after last season we’ll take great encouragement from today. We’re in the competition and it’s down to us now to get it right and win the championship. The Bridgestone tyres were good and consistent today and both drivers chose to use their new set in the final stint of the race.”

Sam Michael, Technical Director - WilliamsF1:”Today’s final positions did not reflect the true situation. We had the fastest car out there and we have a lot to build on. Perhaps we were a bit conservative with our strategy. The Bridgestone tyres worked fantastically - we could not have asked for better.

We saw in free practice on Friday with Alex how well they performed on long runs and the compound was perfect for the race. Mark had a solid race and finished well. Nico made a rookie mistake at the start but drove really well and setting the fastest lap on his debut was exceptional. I’m very happy with our partners’ (Cosworth and Bridgestone) performance on our first GP together and look forward to delivering the results in Malaysia.”