Interview with Bridgestone's Suganuma

In Bahrain it was clear to see how much Toyota suffered from not being able to generate any heat in their tyres, while Ferrari had similar problems in Australia when their choice of compound proved unsuitable for the cool conditions that greeted the teams in Melbourne.

Autosport.com caught up with Bridgestone's technical manager Hisao Suganuma to find out how the Japanese company felt the start to the season had gone and how on top of the warm-up issues they were.

Q. What is your verdict on the way the season has gone so far?

Hisao Suganuma: To be honest, we could see from the results of winter testing that it was quite successful and we could make quite a big improvement. From that point of view it was quite satisfying. But of course in motor racing you have to have the middle step of the podium, and that is still lacking. So we want to get some wins, but in terms of tyre performance from the last three races I am quite satisfied with it.

Q. In Australia we saw Ferrari chose a different type of tyre to Toyota, who managed to get a podium. Do you think you have produced tyres capable of getting wins?

HS: Of course we discuss with the teams about every choice of tyre. The compound that Ferrari chose in Melbourne, we also thought that it could be competitive in certain conditions. Unfortunately we had two Safety Car situations in stint one, so that was affecting the tyre performance quite a lot.

Michael (Schumacher) was struggling to get temperature up on his tyres and every time the Safety Car was deployed we saw the temperatures going down. So the tyre would start working and then the Safety Car would come out. It was a bad situation and he could not show the full performance of the tyre.

If you look at the beginning of the second stint, Michael's lap times were very quick so I thought that if the driver could have pushed and made it work, that type of compound delivered quite a good performance. Then if you look at Mark Webber and Ralf Schumacher's performance, it looks like it was easier to get temperature.

With Webber he carried a lot of fuel in qualifying and it looked like he could do a few more laps in his first stint before he retired, so from that point of view Webber proved that we had tyre performance. Melbourne was an encouraging result for us, so we want to keep pushing in that direction.

Q. Has it been a huge help having teams like Williams and Toyota showing what is possible with the tyres? Last year, for example, if we just take Ferrari's start to the season, it would have been a bit confusing about where you stood after these first three races.

HS: Yes. Ferrari struggled with warm-up performance while the other two teams, the drivers still complained that the warm up took a little bit of time but compared to the Michelin runners their warm-up was not too bad. So we could see different aspects of the results and if we were only with Ferrari then maybe we sometimes get confused ourselves about whether we are right with that direction or not.

Through this winter testing, since Williams and Toyota joined us, we could have very good test results which allowed us to make a cross reference of the results. That was a lot of help and I always kept saying that we could always try two or three different types of tyres in a parallel way, which accelerated our development speed. The result is the tyre that we are using now.

Q. Is the tyre temperature warm-up issue a bigger factor this year than it has been in the past? So many teams are talking about it, like Honda who struggled to get heat in their tyres and Ferrari in Australia.

HS: I am not sure about Michelin. It is a combination of compound and construction characteristics and I don't know what type of compound Michelin runners are taking. Our new construction has shown it has very good wear durability and very good straight-line performance like acceleration and braking, but it is difficult to get temperature in the compounds.

So what we are doing now is trying to use that construction and try to find the best type of compound to get the full performance from that type of construction.

Q. Is there a big problem with warming up the tyres at Imola, or do you think it was simply an issue with Australia?

HS: We expect we might have some cooler weather here, so we took counter measures in terms of the tyre spec for here. Let's see what happens. We have known about the warm-up issue since we introduced this type of tyre and we are working on which type of compound will work best. We are gradually making progress and if you look at Webber and Ralf Schumacher's performance in Melbourne, because the track temperature was lower than the first two rounds, then it showed part of our solution.

The last two weeks we have tried a lot of tyres and particularly in Vallelunga we tried the softer range of compounds, thinking of tyres for here. We see quite good results through that testing, so I must say that I am confident that Bridgestone-shod teams will be competitive this weekend.

Q. Do you understand why you were so good at Imola last year while the rest of the year was a bit difficult? Has that influenced your tyre choice for this year?

HS: Yeah, we tried to understand why we were competitive last year and we had some kind of solutions because our tyre worked well here. We are taking into account that analysis and then we decided what type of tyre we needed to have here. From our point the tyres for this weekend we will be competitive, but this is a competitive situation.

The performance is always relative to our rivals, so if we made some progress of five, if they make a progress of seven then we are still not competitive enough. But looking at the test results in the previous two weeks I think our tyre performed quite well. I am confident that we are competitive this weekend.

Q. Pre-season the Bridgestone teams were quite keen to pool their information together to try and help the development programme. Has that co-operation been maintained now we are well into the season?

HS: Yes, we are still doing data sharing at the tests and it is helping quite a lot. Even sometimes when we are not using specific tyres at tests we can estimate the tyre performance from other team's results. That is quite a good situation and that data sharing is very useful between the Bridgestone-shod teams.

Q. Does that assistance happen at all during a Grand Prix weekend, for example Williams obviously have more data after a Friday because of Alexander Wurz's running?

HS: No. In the race situation it is a little bit different. During the race weekend we don't do that, but after the race it is not as extensive as testing, but we share some basic information between the teams.

Q. Are the development directions of Williams, Toyota and Ferrari similar?

HS: Yes. The demand is very high, but so far the development direction seems very similar. They are a little bit different but more or less they are using the same type of tyre.

Q. Is that a bigger help than if they had gone off on their own routes?

HS: Yes. I must say a good tyre is always good, and from that point of view it means our development direction is right. So we are quite happy with that.