Bridgestone announces tyre allocations

Bridgestone has opted to take a more conservative approach on tyres for this year's Australian Grand Prix after deciding to bring harder compounds than it took to the event last year

With the closing stages of the event at Melbourne last year being marred with the super soft tyre rapidly losing performance, Bridgestone will instead bring its soft and hard compounds for what is now the second race of the season.

The allocation for the other races at the start of the season remains unchanged from last year, with the Japanese tyre manufacturer bringing super soft and medium to Bahrain, and soft and hard to Malaysia.

Hirohide Hamashima, Bridgestone head of motorsport tyre development, said: "Tyre strategy will be very important in 2010 as there is no longer refuelling which was previously a big factor in determining when pit stops would occur.

"We have changed all our dry compounds for this season, as the cars will be heavier and the stint lengths could be longer. We have also made changes to enable quicker warm-up times. We will bring harder tyres to Australia than we did last season, but the compound allocation positions for Bahrain and Malaysia are the same as they were in 2009.

"There will be a big challenge for teams this season on how they use their tyres as they have fewer sets of dry tyres available than before, particularly with the softer tyre at each race."