Bridgestone tops times in Friday European practice

Conditions at Germany’s 5.148km Nürburgring circuit were sunny and warm today and while the track was relatively “green”, Bridgestone’s runners were hard at work evaluating their two specifications of dry tyre. Bridgestone shod Alex Wurz topped the timesheets for his WilliamsF1 team in both of today’s European Grand Prix practice sessions.

As the team’s Friday test driver, it is Wurz’s responsibility to carry out the necessary Bridgestone tyre comparisons for his team-mates. His fastest time of the day was 1m32.079 seconds while the Schumacher brothers were also on good form for their respective Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro and Panasonic Toyota Racing teams. MF1 Racing’s third driver, Adrian Sutil, equipped himself well today setting the tenth fastest time in both sessions while Franck Montagny, who replaces Yuji Ide this weekend, had a busy day settling into the Super Aguri F1 Team race seat. Final tyre choices will be made ahead of tomorrow’s qualifying session.

Hisao Suganuma, Bridgestone Motorsport Technical Manager, said: “Despite the green track the Bridgestone third cars got some productive runs in this morning. Conditions are improving all the time and we are generally pleased with the feedback received so far. The soft and hard specifications seem competitive and although there was a bit of graining with the soft tyres we expect that to reduce through the weekend. We could well see hard and soft specifications being raced this weekend. We shall look closely at the data tonight, assess the tyre wear rates and make our final recommendations to the teams.”