Bridgestone caught out by Turkish weather

Bridgestone has admitted that the colder-than-expected weather in Turkey this weekend has caught its engineers by surprise - and that perhaps they should have brought softer tyres

The change of date of the Istanbul race from August to May was guaranteed to see cooler conditions, but temperatures are much lower than most people anticipated.

And with some graining seen already on the medium compound - and with many drivers struggling to get the hard version up to operating temperatures - Bridgestone has conceded that it may need to rethink its tyre strategy for next season.

Hirohide Hamashima, director of Bridgestone motorsport tyre development, said: "We believed it would be a bit warmer in Turkey in May, but the wind is very, very cold - so there are not so high track temperatures at the moment.

"I think for next season maybe we have to shift the (compound) one position softer.

"It is about 10-15 degrees lower than we expected, so especially the medium compound has some graining until about 10 laps, then it vanishes gradually.

"The lower temperature also makes the harder compound more difficult to generate grip, but we can watch its consistency and it looks good right now, without any bad graining."

Hamashima believes that the tyre situation has not been helped this weekend by a very 'green' track surface, although he is happy that tyre construction revisions made for this year have overcome the severe graining and delamination issues that occurred last year.

"We have checked the car data from every team, and so far we have seen no problems. Last year we found the small problem on the Friday, but now we are very happy and we don't face any trouble."