Bridgestone noted that there were a good mix of tyre strategies used up and down the grid in today’s Malaysian Grand Prix, with teams taking different approaches to pit stop timings and the order in which they used the two dry compounds.
An unexpected lack of rain meant that the teams had to follow the usual tyre rules in today’s race. They state that both the option and the prime tyre must be used by each driver during the course of the event.
Sebastian Vettel, the race winner, began the race on the soft tyre before switching to the harder tyre in the challenging high temperature race.
Director of Bridgestone Motorsport, Hiroshi Yasukawa acknowledged the achievement of the drivers in Malaysia. “Today we saw a very exiting race and I am proud of the part that Bridgestone played in this with a good allocation of tyres, as confirmed by the race winner, Sebastian Vettel. Congratulations to Red Bull for their one-two today, and to Mercedes for Nico Rosberg's third place. It is always a pleasure to visit Malaysia and we have many supporters here.”
Hirohide Hamashima, Bridgestone Director of Motorsport Tyre Developement summarised the race from the tyre company’s perspective. “This was a good and interesting race based around tyre strategies. The hard and soft Bridgestone compounds performed very well, but with distinct characteristics.
“Those who started with the soft tyre had to stop sooner than those who started with the hard, as the soft had a shorter wear life. The hard allowed drivers to continue pushing, as shown by Mark Webber setting the race's fastest lap on lap 53 with this tyre. The soft required a more forgiving style to maintain its performance.
“Drivers were able to use fresh tyres sets in the race, as they did not use these tyres in the wet qualifying yesterday. This meant we saw many fastest race laps as the race progressed, from drivers taking to the track on fresh rubber. Our compounds were able to support a variety of strategies and it was good to see the racing on track between many drivers at different times through the race. Even though the top three drivers used the same strategy, there were strong moves through the field using a hard-soft strategy.
“So many people predicted rain for this race, but today we did not need wet weather to provide excitement on track.”
