Australia Preview Quotes: Bridgestone

Hiroshi Yasukawa, Director of Motorsport: "The Australian Grand Prix is a great race to start the season with and our team of forty engineers, fitters and supporting personnel are raring to get out there. Bridgestone Motorsport finished last season on a real high with Ferrari and Michael Schumacher becoming the sixth consecutive team and driver to take their respective championships on Bridgestone Potenza tyres. We expect the competition to be just as hard fought this year but we are very determined to start this season as we finished the last."

Hisao Suganuma, Technical Manager: "Bridgestone's engineers have worked hard all winter in preparation for this race and we are looking forward to seeing our latest development tyres in action. Whilst tyre performance is always relative to that of your rivals, the progress of Bridgestone's development over the past few months has been significant - and there will be more to come during the season. In the meantime I can say that we have eight new specifications for our teams. We have worked not only on compound development which is important for grip but also on improving both front and rear construction performance. All in all, I was very satisfied with our winter test programme and am confident we'll be competitive in Melbourne - but the true test of course will start on Friday.

"From a track surface point of view, the Melbourne race circuit is quite smooth and requires a soft-medium range compound to facilitate grip levels. Front tyre graining can be an issue resulting in understeer. However, teams will want to work on the prevention of understeer for the best chance of a good one-lap qualifying performance. They will also need to work on getting a good balance of front and rear tyres, which provides consistency over a race distance. In addition to this, the pitlane changes and the increase of pitlane speeds will most likely result in an extra pitstop and therefore shorter race stints, so tyre wear will not be as much of a factor."