Barcelona’s track, the Circuit de Catalunya, is famed for being tough on tyres. With the new modifications which were made over the winter, Bridgestone has been keen to see how their new tyres have stood up to the track during last week’s testing.
Kees van de Grint is happy with the initial results. “We have learnt that the hard compound specification is, in our opinion, a correct choice for this circuit,” he explained. “Positively, it was proven by some teams that you can run with the tyre for a full stint with good degradation results. It was nice to see that the tyre was capable of setting the quickest lap time at the end of the stint.
“The new corner has not provided any surprised from a typre point of view. That part of the circuit, especially on Monday, was quite slippery but that is normal and is what you would expect from new tarmac. Other than that it was no issue for us concerning the tyres.
“From what we have seen so far in testing there is no reason to change the specification of the tyres we have produced, we have produced a good tyre for the teams to race on for this season. It was not a surprise that teams could run for so long on one set of tyres. We think we did our homework quite well in the winter and I think the tyres are quite suitable. Having said that, we need to bear in mind that we will go to a much hotter climate in the future.”
