For only the second time this season, the tyre manufacturer has allocated the soft and medium compounds; an allocation that was used for the first time in Belgium two weeks ago.
Many of the teams and drivers struggled to make the most of the two compounds at Spa and this factored in to the strange result in the grand prix, which was won by Kimi Raikkonen ahead of Giancarlo Fisichella in the Force India.
With the same allocation being used for for the Italian grand prix, Bridgestone’s director of motorsport tyre development Hirohide Harashima is expecting an equally unpredictable weekend.
'Monza has very high speed straights so there will be a lot of forces through the tyres as they rotate at up to 50 times per second,' said Harashima.
'This means the tyre rubber can get very hot, even with the cooling effect of the wind on the long straights.
'At the end of the pit straight there is a heavy braking zone, so drivers have to be careful not to lock their brakes here.
'Low downforce car set-ups are used at Monza, so proportionally more reliance is made on mechanical grip.”
However, Harashima believes that tyre management may be a bigger issue at Monza.
'As we saw in Spa the allocation of the medium and the soft compound tyres has the potential to provide interesting results,' said Harashima.
'The medium compound is the softest of our higher temperature working range tyres and the soft is the hardest of our lower temperature working range tyres.
'This means that their overall performance can be very similar, however their characteristics are different.
'In Spa we saw that different tyres suited different car characteristics, set-ups and driver preference, so maybe it will be the same situation in Monza, however it is a more severe circuit so good tyre management is likely to be a bigger factor.'
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