Britain Preview Quotes: Bridgestone

Hiroshi Yasukawa, Director of Motorsport: "The next three races will be crucial to the outcome of this year's championship and we're looking forward to a fantastic battle. Ferrari are still leading the Constructors' Championship and Michael Schumacher managed to extend his lead in the Drivers' Championship standings after the French Grand Prix. However, we have recognised the need for a major push in development and have spent a great deal of effort working with our teams recently doing just that.

"The racing this year has been close and we are expecting another very exciting grand prix this weekend for the benefit of the British fans. And whilst we may be a Japanese company, we have our F1 operations offices in the UK so this will be the first of two "home" races for us - an extra incentive to try to repeat last year's resounding success which saw Bridgestone's runners claim six of the top seven finishing places. A Bridgestone equipped car won at Silverstone last year and I intend to see that happen again this year!"

Hisao Suganuma, Technical Manager of Bridgestone: "Last week's testing in Europe saw us run a thorough set of tyre test programmes with our teams. Due to their availability of resources and test drivers, the bulk of this testing was carried out by the Ferrari and B.A.R Honda teams, both of whom had four drivers at their disposal over the course of the test days. The use of test drivers is very important as it means we can work more quickly and efficiently through our test programmes. These test drivers, such as Ferrari's Felippe Massa carry out important preliminary test work for us, constantly feeding us information from the driver's perspective.

"Test drivers will also be in constant contact with the race drivers, comparing and discussing different specs, their handling and performance characteristics and so forth. It is then up to the race drivers to make the final decisions. Stability is a key issue at Silverstone because of high speed corners such as Copse and Beckets. But this is just stage one in our current development drive. I was very satisfied with last week's testing and it has given us some significant pointers for future development. There will almost certainly be further developments being phased in over the next few races."