Hiroshi Yasukawa - Director of Bridgestone Motorsport: ”Belgium is the home of Bridgestone Europe so in many ways the Belgian Grand Prix is like a home race for us. Bridgestone Europe employs more than 13000 people throughout Europe, spread between eight tyre plants, one technical centre/proving ground and different national sales organisations. In Belgium itself the Bridgestone Group employs 1100 persons as well as hosts the headquarters of Bridgestone Europe and subsidiary, Bandag Europe. Spa is a fantastic circuit to visit as it has so much history and we are looking forward to an exciting race there.”

Hirohide Hamashima - Bridgestone Director of Motorsport Tyre Development

What are the challenges of Spa?

“Spa is a classic race circuit. It is fast and also has some interesting technical challenges over the course of a lap, and a lap here is longer than anywhere else we visit during the course of a season. There are very long high speed sections, with fast corners. Despite being a fast circuit, the downforce levels used on the cars is quite high, meaning heavy loads are transferred through the tyres. There is significant gradient change over a lap too. Eau Rouge is a very fast corner and the compression at the bottom of the corner means a lot of force through the tyres. Here sufficient tyre pressure is critical.”

What are the primary tyre performance considerations?

“In tyre terms this is a severe circuit. High loads are put through the tyres during a lap. It can be quite cold here, so getting initial heat into the tyres could be a challenge, especially with the higher temperature working range medium compound. We must not, of course, forget the weather. We have seen wet races many times at Spa. Because it is a long course you can have one part dry, one part wet. Tyre choice during the course of the race could well be the deciding factor.”

Image (c) Bridgestone Corporation

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The contrast could not be more marked as in the space of a week, the Formula 1 championship trail switches from one of the newest tracks on the calendar, the Valencia street circuit, to one of the most famous and historic venues in motor sport, Spa-Francorchamps. While Valencia is a man-made circuit, artificially created around a port, Spa owes its character more to nature than to man, as its sweeping 7.004 kilometres follow the contours of the Ardennes. Even some of the roads leading to the circuit have historic connotations, as they used to form part of the much longer version, used in the early days of the World Championship. Standing in the paddock, there is another obvious contrast, as temperatures in Belgium will be much cooler than those encountered in Spain, although Spa’s version of the humidity encountered last week is of the more obvious rainy variety!

The journey from one venue to the other has in itself been a challenge for the teams, as it is one of the longest drives of the year. The Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro transporters and their precious cargo of two F60s and all the equipment, set off from Valencia on Monday morning and the Scuderia mechanics will already be hard at work in Spa today (Wednesday) preparing the cars for Friday practice. The cars will therefore be much the same as in Valencia, apart from the necessary changes to the aerodynamic set-up – basically, lower downforce than last week’s configuration. In addition, Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro has essentially stopped development of the 2009 F60 to concentrate its R&D resources on 2010, whereas other teams have chosen a different option to achieve their own goals.

As for the famous Ardennes weather, the current forecast for the weekend is mainly dry, but the track has its own micro-climate, so predictions can never be relied on. In addition, the length of the circuit means that it is a common occurrence for part of the track to be dry, while rain falls on another section. The length also has an effect on the way Qualifying is run, as drivers usually cannot afford the luxury of going for two timed laps on one run and as for the rain, if it falls in Q3, then it can be a case of simply running to the end of the session.

The benefit of KERS has been ably demonstrated by our drivers in recent races, however, with the Source hairpin coming so soon after the start, it is unlikely that the first few hundred metres will show the benefit at this track. However, once past the hairpin, the long straight, first downhill to Eau Rouge, a corner which could become more of a challenge again, and then up the hill on the other side will provide the most graphic illustration of what extra power generation can do. In fact, the Scuderia engineers believe that KERS will have more of an impact here than at any other circuit on the calendar. Overtaking is possible at Spa, because of the slipstreaming effect and this year, those cars running KERS will probably be able to run slightly more aerodynamic downforce than those without, thus having a power advantage on the faster sections and more grip on the slower ones.

On the tyre front, Bridgestone is bringing their Soft and Medium compounds, rather than the more usual pattern of bringing two types of tyre with a greater difference between them. It is clear that for the F60 it is usually a case of the softer the better, even if that situation has improved in recent races, but the greater similarity between the Prime and Option at this race, should help on this front. Some uncharacteristic warm weather would also be a benefit.

Ferrari has enjoyed plenty of success at this venue, winning no less than eleven times, with a further four wins in the Belgian Grand Prix, when the race was held at Zolder. In 2004 for example, Ferrari was able to celebrate winning the World Championship well before the season finale, courtesy of Michael Schumacher. On a track where a driver can make the difference, we can expect Kimi Räikkönen to again be very competitive, as he won here three times and last year, had one of his best races, right up to the chaotic final moments of the race, which was eventually won by his team-mate, Felipe Massa. The Finn has also won in other formulae at this track. As for Luca Badoer, after making his race debut for the Scuderia in Spain, he returned home to Montebelluna, doing some training for a couple of days, even though he coped well on the physical side in the torrid conditions last Sunday. Although he has not raced at Spa since 1999, this is at least he circuit he knows, apart from the minor modifications introduced a couple of years ago. Badoer himself expects to make a step forward on the performance front.

Source: Ferrari F1

Image (c) Bridgestone Corporation

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Maranello, 25th August 2009

I really enjoy winning, but even a third place can give you some good feelings. We started into the European GP from the sixth position on the starting grid, we had a good start and we managed to gain another place on the podium: we can hardly expect more than this. Our goal is to fight for a position amongst the first three teams and we’ve reached this goal. It was definitely one of my best weekends so far this year, together with the ones in Monaco and Budapest, obviously from a technical point of view.

This year the car runs very well on the city circuits and on the ones with slower corners. In Valencia I had a very good feeling since Friday’s first practice session, when we drove a lot with lots of petrol on board and we knew that if we could gain a decent result in the qualifying and had a good start we’d have the possibility to fight for a place on the podium - and that is how it went in the end. The F60’s race set up is better than the one for the qualifying; due to that fact we could be faster than Kovalainen’s McLaren during the middle stint: during this part of the race I was constantly informed about my own and Heikki’s lap times, giving 110%. The car was set up well and the speed was high enough to overtake him during the pit stop.

With the points we gained, we are still ahead of McLaren in the Constructors’ Championsip. This is our goal as a team, but it’s very difficult to reach, considering that we stopped developing this car, concentrating on the one for the upcoming season.

In a couple of days we’ll be on the track again for the Belgian GP. The main goal is to hold the standard of the last races, which means that we have to try to get on the podium again. I always loved racing at Spa where I’ve won many times since I started my career in the smaller racing series. I really like driving here: 44 laps might be not enough! Last year everything went up in smoke due to the rain at the end of the race and I ran into a wall: I set all on victory and I didn’t have anything to lose. This year the situation is slightly different, also because we don’t have a car that’s able to compete on the highest performance level. But we’ll give it our all - and even more - for a good result.

You need a very good set up for the car for the fast corners in Spa. Overtaking doesn’t happen very often this year so it’s very important to have a good qualifying. We’ll always have the KERS at the start. 

Source - Kimi’s Official Site

Image (c) Bridgestone Corporation

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