Italy Preview Quotes: Bridgestone

Hiroshi Yasukawa, Director of Motorsport: "The Italian GP is one of the highlights of the F1 calendar. The atmosphere and passion of this event will be spurring Bridgestone on every inch of the way. It will be a fast, furious and tough race and in light of recent events we sincerely hope it will also be a fair one for the benefit of F1 as a whole.

"There is much riding on this final European round and Bridgestone has invested a great deal of time and effort making sure our teams have the best tyres for the race. Our teams and engineers worked extremely hard at the recent test and I look forward to seeing the results of that hard work."

Hisao Suganuma, Technical Manager of Bridgestone Motorsport: "Monza is a very high speed track so we can expect heat durability to be one of the main issues there. Tyre surface temperatures may not be high when a car is running down the straights but the tyres themselves are running at a very high frequency producing stress inside the tyres which generates a lot of heat. On top of that, because of the high speeds, our tyres must be strong enough to cope with the high centrifugal forces which are experienced at Monza.

"The key will be to provide high grip with good heat durability. As a result of last week’s testing we found some of the compounds we tried were both strong enough for Monza and also competitive. Cars will be run with low downforce set-ups which means it is easier to slide while cornering, which also generates heat in the tyres. Monza is one of the toughest tracks on the calendar."