Bridgestone vows to help riders

The company's manager of Motorcycle Sport, Hiroshi Yamada, has said that the focus on his company's work will move now from construction onto compounds to try and help those who still want more fine-tuning in how they get on with their rubber.

"Generally, our plan has been focussed on getting the direction of tyre construction correct but now we will be starting to adapt the tyre to meet the requirements of each of our teams," said Yamada.

"Some riders still require additional support to have tyres that work with their riding style. We are aware that our riders all need tyres that work with their style and we have built this into our development plan.

"We can only offer reassurances at this early stage of the season that we will do everything we can to fulfill our teams' and riders' requests."

Yamada is confident that his company's expansion of its involvement in MotoGP to supply four manufacturers will not lead to its resources becoming stretched in 2007.

"We are fully committed to fair service of our teams across all areas of Bridgestone's Motorsport activities," he explained. "It is true that supplying four manufacturers will raise the pressure on us to perform this season but we know where the limits lie.

"The tyre restrictions this season have given us the capacity to supply more teams and we have service engineers dedicated to each team in order to ensure that feedback is transferred and subsequently implemented."