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Timo Glock set the marker on the opening day of running for the Japanese Grand Prix by using Bridgestone’s soft compound Potenza tyre to set Friday’s fastest lap of 1:18.383s. The Toyota driver was four-hundredths of a second faster than the next driver, Fernando Alonso.

Both sessions were dry today and Bridgestone’s medium and soft compound Potenza F1 tyres were used. For the Japanese Grand Prix both dry compounds feature painted grooves, with four green grooves on the medium compound and three green and one white on the soft compound. This is to show Bridgestone’s support for the FIA’s 'Make Cars Green' environmental campaign, designed to encourage drivers to ‘think green’ when they drive.

Glock’s fastest time was almost four-tenths faster than the fastest Friday time set last season, a 1:18.734s, set by Hamilton.

Hirohide Hamashima, Tyre Development Director
“Today we saw a green circuit, as well as green grooves on our tyres. Grip was initially difficult to find from the track , but we expect to see improvement over the weekend. Performance from the medium compound was very consistent and the data we have so far shows that this will be a good race tyre.”

“The soft tyre has a lap time advantage for the first few laps and we saw a very good lap time today from Timo Glock’s Toyota using this tyre, which we expect to be favoured for qualifying. The wear rate of the rear tyres was more than that on the fronts. As expected, the long left hand 100R corner is crucial for tyre management and set-ups, so it will be interesting to see how teams deal with the challenge of this corner through the weekend.”

E.A. © CAPSIS International