Ferrari Happy with Bridgestone's Performance

The Ferrari team were happy with the performance of their Bridgestone tyres following Friday's practice for the Spanish Grand Prix.

Seven out of the top ten runners were using rubber from the Japanese manufacturer, with World Champion Michael Schumacher topping the times in his Bridgestone-shod Ferrari. German Heinz-Harald Frentzen was second quickest with the Arrows, completing a promising performance for the Bridgestone-shod runners.

Ferrari's technical director Ross Brawn was encouraged by the performance of the Japanese rubber, and was hoping to remain ahead during the weekend.

"It was a good day and the Bridgestone tyres seem to be working very well here compared with the others, and I hope that holds up for the weekend," said Brawn. "As usual it is difficult to tell what the true performance level of our competitors is on a Friday, but you can see that there are more Bridgestone runners near the front.

"Even though we test here a lot, we still did a lot of laps as there is no such thing as the perfect set-up and you can always improve, or try new ideas you come up with at the factory, plus the track conditions change."

Schumacher, winner of three of the four races so far this year, was also pleased with his day's work and was confident for Saturday's qualifying.

"The tyres seem well suited to the track and offer a consistent level of performance," he said. "On top of that, first impressions confirm the findings we made at our test sessions here over the past few weeks. All in all, we can be reasonably confident about tomorrow's qualifying."

Schumacher's teammate Rubens Barrichello, the only man who did not improve his time in the second timed session, was fourth quickest with the second F2002.