Bridgestone hopes for more rain

The Japanese company has struggled at Donington Park in the past and believes that the lack of dry practice mileage will prove costly if the weather improves for qualifying or the race.

"We brought a variety of slick tyres to Donington this weekend in a bid to combat the difficulties we have faced with grip levels and tyre life in previous years, so we would have preferred to have had a dry track day to assess the performance of these tyres," said Ubukata.

"Now we have spent two of our four practice sessions working with wet tyres, it would certainly be easier to continue in this way.

"The forecast is currently for more rain all weekend, so we could find that today has been very useful, not only for tyre manufacturers but also for teams to set up their bikes.

"If, however, we have dry conditions tomorrow, we will have a busy day to make up for the lost ground today."

Ubukata was cautiously optimistic about the performance of Bridgestone's wet compounds.

"It seems that the soft tyre gives a competitive lap time, but of course we need to understand if this translates over the complete race distance," he said.

"The medium spec also performs quite well, but we require additional wet running to get an accurate comparison.

"The tyres are similar specification to what we used in the Le Mans race, but the overall performance is also related to the circuit characteristics and Donington Park is one of the toughest on the calendar for our tyres."