Bridgestone Saturday update
Bridgestone’s soft tyre provided the grip for Red Bull Racing driver Sebastian Vettel to qualify on his third pole position of the season for tomorrow’s British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Vettel set a time of 1min 19.509secs, just over three tenths faster than Brawn GP Formula 1 Team driver Rubens Barrichello. Mark Webber (Red Bull Racing) went third fastest.
Bridgestone’s new intermediate tyre was used for the first time in a grand prix session today when it was used by a number of competitors during the morning practice session. AT&T Williams driver Nico Rosberg used the soft Bridgestone to go fastest in this session with a time of 1min 18.899secs.
Q&A with Hirohide Hamashima - Bridgestone Director of Motorsport Tyre Development
What was significant about today’s running? Today we saw the full weather range of Bridgestone’s Formula One tyres used in front of a very big Saturday crowd at Silverstone. Although the track was only damp at the beginning of the first session, the intermediate and wet tyre were used, as well as both dry Bridgestones. This was good preparation for any weather tomorrow. In qualifying we saw some very fast lap times, with Sebastian Vettel setting the day’s fastest time using the hard tyre in Q2 and also setting pole with the soft tyre. Silverstone is a high speed circuit which the current generation cars and our slick tyres are suiting very well.
What are the tyre strategy considerations for tomorrow’s race? First and foremost the weather will be a very big factor here, just as we have seen so many times at Silverstone. If it is wet like last year there will be the difficult decisions of whether to use the intermediate or wet Bridgestone, or decide if it is dry enough to use the hard or soft dry tyre. If there is no rain and the temperature is cool then the hard tyre is taking around 3-4 laps to get up to speed, so the soft tyre could be the favoured starting tyre. There is good potential for an exciting race tomorrow.
Compounds used: Hard / Soft
