Bridgestone teams shine at Imola

Bridgestone Motorsport’s teams were on good form today at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino as they hit the track for the first time ahead of this weekend’s San Marino Grand Prix. Bridgestone has brought new compounds to Imola and the teams were busy deciding which to run. Scuderia Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher set the fastest lap of the day with a time of 1m24.751s.

Fellow Bridgestone runner WilliamsF1 third driver, Alex Wurz, set the third fastest time of the day while running a total of 50 laps, enabling his teammates Mark Webber and Nico Rosberg to complete very few laps. Panasonic Toyota Racing’s Jarno Trulli had a productive day, setting competitive lap times but his teammate Ralf Schumacher had his running cut short with a mechanical problem. MF1 Racing’s Christijan Albers seemed to be relishing a return to Europe, posting some solid times in both of today’s sessions. The teams now have one more session on Saturday morning before deciding their final tyre choices ahead of the afternoon qualifying session.

Hisao Suganuma, Bridgestone Motorsport Technical Manager, said: “Track conditions were dusty this morning but this is normal for a Friday. We also found that the areas which have had new tarmac laid down were lacking in grip but we expect these sections to improve as the weekend progresses. The Bridgestone teams got plenty of tyre work done today with Alex Wurz in particular providing some good comparison data between the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ specifications. Looking at the lap times it seems both should be competitive this weekend. On the whole we saw some promising times from the majority of the Bridgestone runners, which bodes well for the race on Sunday. We shall now go and analyse the lap times and wear rates before giving the teams our opinions ahead of their final tyre choices. What was good to see today was that while we brought compounds for a cooler European climate, they have performed very well in the warm conditions we have experienced today, demonstrating a broad working range.”