Hungary: Bridgestone suffered track conditions

By Phil Huff (22/08/2003)
August 22 2003

Round 13 got off to a hot and dusty start today with two of Bridgestone's equipped teams, Jordan Ford and European Minardi Cosworth, both trying to make the best of dirty track conditions in the early morning two-hour private test session.

Notorious for taking time to clean up, conditions at the revised Hungarian circuit meant that despite all of Bridgestone's teams trying both their two nominated specifications in the mid-morning practice session, a final decision about tyre choice for Saturday's qualifying session and the race on Sunday will be left until after tomorrow's two practice sessions.

Hisao Suganuma, Technical Manager of Bridgestone Motorsport: "The Bridgestone equipped cars suffered with track conditions today. When Michael started his qualifying lap the track was very dirty and he lost a lot of time because of lack of grip on the track. Conditions did improve a little as the qualifying session progressed and Rubens was able to set a reasonable lap - although not quite quick enough. I think we'll be competitive in race trim but we've yet to see tomorrow's practices. Nick Heidfeld put in an encouraging time and if he hadn't made a mistake on the second turn and set a similar first sector time to that of his teammate Heinz-Harald Frentzen, I think he could have found himself further up the standings."

Ross Brawn, Technical Director of Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro: "We encountered the normal difficulties of being first out on a track which is as dirty as the Hungaroring. Neither driver had a nice balance on the car, which we did have this morning, so we have to assume track conditions had changed. There's not much we can judge from this afternoon. We'll work on the car tomorrow morning and carry on our programme. The track is so dirty we want to let it settle down before we start to think finally which specification of tyre we intend to use on Sunday."