French GP: Bridgestone Friday practice notes

Bridgestone ready to strike in France

Bridgestone Motorsport's five teams had a scorching start to their French Grand Prix weekend today with the runners experiencing track temperatures of up to 50°Celsius. Nevertheless, Bridgestone was expecting the hot weather and once the track conditions rubbered in, the teams were soon evaluating their two dry tyre specifications. Tyres for the 4.411km Magny-Cours circuit need to withstand not only high track temperatures but also provide good rear traction and good change of direction performance.

WilliamsF1's Alex Wurz topped the times for the Bridgestone runners with a time of 1m17.859s in the second session while Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro's Michael Schumacher was not far behind. The Toyota Panasonic Racing drivers, Ralf Schumacher and Jarno Trulli got plenty of running in and were also looking competitive. MF1 Racing's third driver, Adrian Sutil, meanwhile, looked quite at home setting the fifth and seventh fastest times of the two respective sessions.

Hisao Suganuma, Bridgestone Motorsport Technical Manager:

"As normal, track conditions in the morning's practice session were green and consequently lacking in grip. As a result we saw a fairly high level of graining until the track started to rubber in during the second session. Even so, the graining should improve further over the weekend and perhaps enable some of the teams to run their soft specification tyre which will give them more grip."

"We saw no signs of wear or durability problems so it is a case now of seeing how the track develops ahead of tomorrow's qualifying session by which time our teams will have had to make their final tyre decisions. Interestingly this is one circuit on the calendar where the time it takes to do a pitstop does not cost the driver too much and therefore we may see some three stop strategies this weekend."

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