Bridgestone´s Yamada: `We still have to prove ourselves at dry Donington´

Stoner´s victory came in the wet, with question marks still hanging over Bridgestone´s dry weather capabilities in Britain.

Despite not so much as a pole position to their name in the 22-year history of premier class Donington competition, the fabricant are optimistic that records are made for breaking, as Motorcycle Sport Unit Manager Hiroshi Yamada explains.

`We obtained a good result in last year's wet conditions at Donington with Casey winning and Chris Vermeulen in third. It was the first time that a rider on our tyres had won in MotoGP at Donington, so it was an important result,´ says the Bridgestone boss.

`We still have to prove ourselves in the dry conditions, but I believe our technical team has done a great job to improve our performance at this type of circuit, and I look forward to another competitive race weekend.´

On the technical side, Bridgestone will be taking measures to ensure peak performance at what is a difficult track for tyre temperatures, as Race Tyre Development Manager Tohru Ubukata elaborates.

`Donington is one of the circuits that we class as `slippery´ which means a track that does not generate huge amounts of grip. It is not an easy circuit layout because we have many slow-speed right-hand turns which demand good edge grip, while the asymmetric composition of corners means that we need good warm-up performance on the left-hand side, especially through Craner curves, which is the faster, flowing section of the track.

`The weather at Donington is always difficult to predict, but we should expect cooler temperatures, similar to what we had in Le Mans, so we will bring a new low temperature compound in anticipation of these conditions. We also have a new construction which is designed for further edge grip improvement.´