Canadian GP: Bridgestone Friday practice notes

Bridgestone teams beaver away in Friday practice sessions

The Bridgestone equipped teams got straight to business today making tyre evaluations on the first day of running at the Canadian Grand Prix. The 4.361km Gilles Villeneuve Circuit is renowned as the second fastest track on the Formula One calendar and Bridgestone has carefully chosen four dry weather specifications for its teams this weekend.

First to get to grips this morning were the two Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro cars of Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello. Schumacher's time of 1:14.013 was the fastest of the day and well under last year's pole position time of 1:15.529.

Sauber Petronas' Giancarlo Fisichella, meanwhile, looked determined to continue his points scoring run as he set consistently fast times in both morning and afternoon practice sessions. As normal, final tyre choices will be made by 9am on Saturday.

Hisao Suganuma, Bridgestone Motorsport Technical Manager:

"The track was very green this morning making grip levels quite low and as the cars started running the lap times got quicker and quicker, making it quite difficult to judge the true performance of the cars. However, the Bridgestone cars all set some good times which we are pleased with. By the second session, the track had improved further and most of the Bridgestone drivers tried both their tyre options. It seems we have consistency from both the "soft" and "hard" specs. We can also expect the performance of the tyres to keep improving as conditions warm up over the weekend."

Ross Brawn, Technical Director of Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro:

"We've had two very good practice sessions and got a lot done. The cars are also reasonably well balanced. We had to work on the brakes today and we'll need to make a decision on the brake configurations tomorrow. Both of the Bridgestone tyre specifications are very similar so I don't think there will be a bad decision. They are quite similar in performance so we'll look through all the data tonight before making the final choice."

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