Australia Preview Quotes: Bridgestone

Hiroshi Yasukawa, Director of Motorsport: "We are very much looking forward to this

exciting new season. The regulations this year will make it especially interesting and a

challenge for all involved. Each driver has only four sets of dry tyres per race weekend and

this will test both the tyre manufacturers and the drivers. However, our technical personnel

have been working extremely hard and I have confidence in their ability to rise to the

challenge. Our partner teams have also taken on this extra challenge with us and I wish them

the best of luck this season. Australia is an excellent location to start the year. Not only is it a well organised race but we are always made to feel very welcome by the great spectators so we hope we can give them a good show and come away with a good result."

Hisao Suganuma, Technical Manager: "I am really looking forward to Melbourne this

year; it will be an exciting weekend to see how far we have progressed over the past few

months. It is never easy testing in the cold of winter and arriving at the end of Australia's

summer so the results will be interesting. We completed our final tests in Valencia last week

where we had both dry and naturally wet conditions which enabled us to firstly confirm our dry

specifications for Melbourne and secondly confirm the wet tyre test results which we had

gathered from an artificially wet track session at a previous Valencia test. So it was a very

productive week and our long runs in particular were encouraging with just one week to go

before the race. It will be an interesting race though. From previous years' experiences in

Australia we can expect to see some front tyre graining from understeer so the teams will

need to work hard on car set-up to overcome this. It is one of the keys to being competitive in Melbourne. However, the most interesting aspect of Melbourne this year of course will be

discovering how our new tyres perform under the new regulations which state drivers can only

use one set for both qualifying sessions and the race. We shall be keeping a close watch on

the status of our tyres, noting lap times, monitoring tyre performances and drivers comments,

and checking them closely as safety is our first priority. Because our tyres have to last for

over 350kms, compound wise we will have tyres in the medium to hard range - slightly harder

then in previous years. I also don't expect teams to stop more than once or twice during the

race this year because of these new regulations."