Bridgestone Barcelona/Valencia week one test notes

2 Winter testing gets underway.

A productive first week of winter testing to develop the Bridgestone tyres that will race in 2003 draws to a close in Spain today. Three Bridgestone teams have been in action at Barcelona and Valencia, and some useful work has been done.

The main aim of this week and the next fortnight of testing prior to Christmas is to identify the development direction Bridgestone needs to take in order to build on its competitiveness and race-winning performance next year.

Up to ten new specifications have been tested this week.

Hisao Suganuma, Bridgestone's Technical Manager, said: "We have done a lot of laboratory testing during the last few months so one of our first tasks is to confirm those results on the track during November and December. This is the starting point towards identifying the route we want to take for 2003. We have done some basic comparisons this week and that has already given us some useful indicators for next year."

Dry weather with track temperatures above 20C have allowed the teams to complete hundreds of laps, giving Bridgestone a large amount of useful data to work through. Lucky Strike B.A.R. Honda and Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro ran cars in Barcelona, while Sauber Petronas concentrated its testing on Valencia. Ferrari was also testing at Mugello in Italy and is expected to continue working there into the weekend.

Luca Badoer, working on a tyre development programme, was quickest at the Circuit de Catalunya, Barcelona on Tuesday. He drove the second fastest lap at the Spanish track on Wednesday but with an improved lap time of 1:17.978 for Ferrari, which he bettered again today, running fastest overall with a 1:17.141.

Mr Suganuma, who has been working at Valencia this week, said: "Overall, testing this week has gone well, the results have been encouraging and we have gathered some promising data. But this is only the start and we have plans to try many different options during the winter."

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