Australia Preview Quotes: Bridgestone
Hiroshi Yasukawa, Director of Motorsport: "We are very much looking forward to this
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:Â "IÂ 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."
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