Bridgestone: High tyre wear a consequence of warm-up tweaks

Earlier in the year a spate of crashes on cold tyres led to calls for Bridgestone to take action. The company's chief field engineer Masao Azuma said a corollary of the changes Bridgestone made to solve this problem was that the tyres would become less durable over a longer distance.

"It is a prime illustration of the balance between warm-up performance and durability - warm-up performance was clearly very good today in the cool conditions with the top 10 fastest riders all setting their best times within the first six laps, and Casey [Stoner]'s lap record coming on lap four," said Azuma.

"Conversely, it was also clear that tyre wear was a key factor for some riders towards the end of the race, but this is the trade-off of achieving better warm-up performance that the riders have been asking for this season."

Azuma also underlined that the variation in weather conditions and temperatures was also bringing some unexpected results. After a hot start to the Aragon weekend, race day was cool and very windy.

"Conditions for the race today were completely different to the rest of the weekend as the track was much cooler and there was a strong wind blowing down the main straight," he said.

"This meant that the situation for the tyres and bike set-ups was very different. Even though our tyre compound options were the same this time as at Aragon last year, because the track conditions were different this year so was tyre behaviour."

Top-five finishers Marco Simoncelli and Ben Spies, plus Ducati's Valentino Rossi, were among the riders who complained that their tyre performance dropped off dramatically during today's grand prix.