Formula One news

Bridgestone expects grip to improve during the weekend

In Friday's two free practice session the Formula 1 drivers used Bridgestone's medium and soft compound. For the Japanese Grand Prix both dry compounds feature painted grooves, with four green grooves on the medium compound and three green and one white on the soft compound. According to Bridgestone's Hirohide Hamashima the grip was low on Friday but should improve on Saturday and Sunday.

Hirohide Hamashima, Bridgestone director of motorsport tyre development, said: "Today we saw a green circuit, as well as green grooves on our tyres. Grip was initially difficult to find from the track, but we expect to see improvement over the weekend. Performance from the medium compound was very consistent and the data we have so far shows that this will be a good race tyre.
"The soft tyre has a lap time advantage for the first few laps and we saw a very good lap time today from Timo Glock's Toyota using this tyre, which we expect to be favoured for qualifying. The wear rate of the rear tyres was more than that on the fronts. As expected, the long left hand 100R corner is crucial for tyre management and set-ups, so it will be interesting to see how teams deal with the challenge of this corner through the weekend."
Bridgestone introduced the green grooves on its tyres this weekend to show Bridgestone's support for the FIA's Make Cars Green environmental campaign, designed to encourage drivers to 'think green' when they drive.

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