Bridgestone gears up for 'wrong way' test.

As the GP2 Series heads to Turkey for its eighth round, official tyre supplier Bridgestone is hoping that its tyre choice for the weekend receives similar praise to 2006.

The weekend's two races will be run on the hard compound Potenza, with the challenging and technically diverse Istanbul Park circuit set to pose a tough test for both the teams and their tyres. The hard compound has been used twice before this season - at Barcelona, where Timo Glock and Bruno Senna won races, and at Silverstone, where Adam Carroll and Andreas Zuber took the spoils - but will face a different examination in Turkey.

Istanbul Park has shown itself to be a difficult track to master, with its mix of gradients and different radius corners linking the various long straights and high speed sections. The track is challenging for tyres given the high speeds and high temperatures experienced, with ambient and track temperatures typically higher than those experienced at other circuits during the year - including Barcelona.

Zuber returns to Turkey as a race winner there in 2006 - although his maiden GP2 triumph was overshadowed by Lewis Hamilton's recovery drive after an early spin - while iSport team-mate Glock arrives as points leader, even though his once large advantage has been slashed to just one point after a frustrating weekend in Hungary.

The German, who now faces a renewed challenge from Lucas di Grassi, revelled in Istanbul Park's wide track width and overtaking-friendly layout to add to the excitement last season, but will have to deal with the relatively unusual anti-clockwise direction of travel, with only the season-ending Valencia track also running in the same direction.

"Last year, the drivers generally praised the low degradation and high performance of the hard compound tyres, because it is a track with a very high speed corner at turn eleven and a very long corner at turn eight, which encourage a high rate of tyre wear," confirmed Bridgestone's director of motorsport tyre development, Hirohide Hamashima.

"The track is also anti-clockwise, which means the right tyres will be under more stress at this circuit as opposed to the left tyres at all clockwise circuits.

"Some of the new circuits on the GP2 calendar provide less opportunity to overtake, but Turkey is an exception as it provides opportunities at turns one, eleven and twelve."