Bridgestone Motorsport Wrap for August 25th 2008

Massa in charge in Bridgestone's 200th race

Ferrari's Felipe Massa has a reputation for winning races from pole position, and he reinforced that again at the European Grand Prix on the streets of Valencia in Spain.

He won the first race to be held in Valencia, which was also the 200^th Formula One grand prix to be contested by Bridgestone - and Massa's 100^th of his career.

The Brazilian started from pole on the soft-compound Bridgestone Potenza tyres and was never seriously challenged throughout the race, beating home McLaren's Lewis Hamilton and BMW Sauber's Robert Kubica.

"We must congratulate Felipe Massa and Ferrari for winning the 200^th Grand Prix in which Bridgestone have participated since 1997," said Hirohide Hamashima, Director of Bridgestone Motorsport Tyre Development.

"Both the soft and super soft compounds worked very well here, which is a credit to our engineers who selected this allocation for this new race destination."

Massa's fourth win of the season narrowed the gap in the championship to Hamilton to just six points, with the Briton's second place taking him to 70 points. However, defending champion Kimi Raikkonen suffered Ferrari's second major engine problem in successive races and is now 13 points adrift of Hamilton. 

"You cannot ask for more especially at my one hundredth grand prix with every single one of them powered by a Ferrari engine," Massa said.

"I got a good start and I pushed to the maximum right from the early laps. In the second part of the race, the car was exceptional, but also in the final stint, when I had the softer (super-soft compound Bridgestone) tyres, I could do the lap times easily."

A huge partisan crowd had turned up to watch home-town hero Fernando Alonso, but the Spaniard's poor qualifying performance cost him as he was caught in a mid-pack incident on the opening lap and retired with rear wing failure.

The next race is the Belgian Grand Prix on September 5-7 where Bridgestone's hard and medium compound Potenza tyres will tackle the magical Spa Francorchamps circuit.

European Grand Prix result

1. Felipe Massa (Brz) Ferrari
2. Lewis Hamilton (GB) McLaren-Mercedes
3. Robert Kubica (Pol) BMW Sauber

4. Heikki Kovalainen (Fin) McLaren- Mercedes

5. Jarno Trulli (Ita) Toyota

6. Sebastian Vettel (Ger) Toro Rosso- Ferrari

7. Timo Glock (Ger) Toyota
8. Nico Rosberg (Ger) Williams-Toyota