Hungarian GP: Bridgestone preview

Bridgestone heads to the tight and twisty Hungaroring with the medium and super soft Potenza tyres for round twelve of the championship, the Hungarian Grand Prix on July 30 - August 1. After taking tyres from the extremes of the dry tyre range to ...

Bridgestone heads to the tight and twisty Hungaroring with the medium and super soft Potenza tyres for round twelve of the championship, the Hungarian Grand Prix on July 30 - August 1.

After taking tyres from the extremes of the dry tyre range to Germany, Bridgestone reverts to a one step gap with the allocation for this race. The medium and super soft allocation was previously used in Bahrain, Monaco and Canada. Although the 4.381 km Hungaroring is a permanent race track, its layout resembles that of a street course. The track surface is generally slippery, particularly at the beginning of the race weekend.

Hiroshi Yasukawa - Director of Bridgestone Motorsport, says:

"The Hungaroring holds many good motorsport memories for Bridgestone as we came very close to seeing a victory on our tyres in our very first season with Damon Hill in 1997 driving for Arrows. Today, Hungary is an interesting market for Bridgestone. We have a factory in Tatabanya which uses the Bridgestone BIRD system. This is the Bridgestone Innovative and Rational Development system which shows how we are pushing innovative technology and shows our passion for excellence in all that we do."

Hirohide Hamashima - Bridgestone Director of Motorsport Tyre Development, says:

"The Hungaroring is a challenging circuit even though it is one of the shortest on the calendar. We expect to hear a lot of discussion about the track surface at the beginning of the weekend, as the circuit is not used as much as some, so the surface is quite dirty for the first sessions. We can expect to see some graining on Friday because of this. The ambient and track temperatures are often very hot here, but as the surface is quite smooth and there are no very high lateral forces we don't expect overheating to be too much of an issue if the tyres are managed well. Finding the maximum traction through the last corner is very important as it enables a good top speed on the short straight, leading into the first corner, where there is the main overtaking opportunity on the circuit. This is a track where Bridgestone came very close to winning a race in our first season in the sport, so we hope we see a good race in our final visit here."