Bridgestone Motorsport continues its scheduled winter test programme this week (7-10 December) at the circuit of Jerez de la Frontera. Bridgestone's teams Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro and Jordan Grand Prix spent four days last week (1-4 December) at the Spanish circuit, where wet weather conditions persisted for much of the time, enabling Bridgestone to complete the wet tyre programmes that had previously been cancelled on 29 November at Fiorano due to fog. The poor weather in Spain did, however, interfere with Bridgestone's dry tyre development programmes leaving Bridgestone and Ferrari with a substantial programme to work through later this week.

Unphased by the work ahead of the Bridgestone Motorsport team, Technical Manager Hisao Suganuma commented: "Due to the amount of rain we had last week, we completed only a small number of laps on dry tyres on Saturday afternoon - the final day of the test. Although we did get some valuable information from those runs, we shall now run most of the development specifications due to be tested last week in addition to the new arrivals originally scheduled for this week. Naturally, this does leave us with a lot to do in the next few days but we plan to use the time in an efficient manner and should be able to complete the programmes."

He continued: "Last week, however, was by no means a wasted opportunity. We tried several new constructions and compounds for our wet tyres and the natural rain conditions, as opposed to artificially wetting a test track, enabled us to gain some excellent data. We found some very positive results in both development areas and have a clear picture of our next phase of wet tyre development."