Bridgestone announce tire specifications

Bridgestone has announced the compound allocations of Potenza tires for the first nine rounds of the championship.

The Bridgestone Potenza tires for the 2008 season feature minor changes, made in the interests of safety, from last season’s tires. The allocations for the first nine races of the season are the same as used in the respective events in 2007 except for the Bahrain Grand Prix, which will now use the medium and soft compounds, as opposed to the hard and medium compounds in 2007.

Also of note, the super soft compound, which will be used at the Monaco Grand Prix, is modified from the compound used in 2007. The other three compounds, hard, medium and soft remain the same, as do Bridgestone’s wet and extreme wet tires.

The tire marking of the softer of the two tires allocated to a Grand Prix continues with the bottom of the second from inside groove painted white. The FIA’s tire regulations are unchanged from those which occurred in 2007 as regards dry and wet tire allocation numbers.

Each driver receives 14 sets of dry tires for a Grand Prix, broken down into seven sets of each compound. Four sets of wet tires and three sets of extreme wet tires are additionally available to drivers.

“Tire allocation choice for the first half of the season has been made easier by the continuity of our tires from last year," said Bridgestone Motorsport Director Hirohide Hamashima.

"We have made a minor evolutionary change to the construction of the dry tires for safety and we have modified the super soft compound, but apart from that the tires are the same. However, we should see faster lap times as teams and drivers now have a year’s experience with these tires and the cars are being developed all the time."

"For Bahrain, having looked at the data we accumulated last year, and data from the recent test there, we are confident about using softer tires. In the second half of the season we will have more of a challenge with tire allocation as we visit two new street courses at Valencia and Singapore."

Tire compounds for rounds one to nine:
Melbourne – Soft, Medium
Sepang – Medium, Hard
Sakhir – Soft, Medium
Barcelona – Medium, Hard
Istanbul – Medium, Hard
Monte Carlo – Super Soft, Soft
Montreal – Super Soft, Soft
Magny Cours – Soft, Medium
Silverstone – Medium, Hard.