German Grand Prix - Race Round-Up
WHAT A DAY AT THE RACE
Under somewhat cloudy skies, Panasonic Toyota Racing secured
two more points at the German Grand Prix, which turned out
to be a challenging, yet exciting race for the team. The third
corner right at the start was the showplace of contact between
Ralf Schumacher and David Coulthard. Upon colliding with David,
Ralf's nose was damaged, thus forcing him to make an early
pit stop for repairs. He lost 8 positions, but came back fighting
and pushed through traffic before having to drive through
the pit lane in lap 35 as a penalty for speeding during his
pit stop. Considering he had four pit stops, he had a solid
drive and finished in 9th place. Jarno on the other hand,
had a great start after moving up 8 positions from 20th to
12th place. He gave a strong showing of the TF106B's potential
and his driving ability by overtaking many cars and moving
up the field the whole race to capture 7th place. Now the
team will travel to Budapest, the beautiful city which is
known as the 'Queen of the Danube', to contest the final round
of races before the well-earned summer break. The team hopes
to repeat similar results to last year in Hungary, where Ralf
and Jarno took 3rd and 4th place respectively.
Jarno Trulli (Car 8, Chassis TF106/09B)
Race Classification: 7th
Gap: +26.544s (from race winner)
Qualifying Classification: 13th
Lap time: 1m15.150s (+1.372s in Session 2)
Grid: 20th
"As always, the German Grand Prix brings unexpected
results and this weekend has not gone how we had hoped for.
It is quite unfortunate that we did not qualify better yesterday.
But even though I started from the back of the grid, we can
be very happy with the performance of the car and the fantastic
results. I had an incredible start and could do a lot of overtaking
which made the race quite exciting for me. Our race pace was
very quick and we can be encouraged by the results we ended
up with today. I owe a great thanks to the team, because the
car was very competitive and I think we have huge potential
to bounce back at the coming races."
Ralf Schumacher (Car 7, Chassis TF106/07B)
Race Classification: 9th
Gap: +1.00.351s (from race winner)
Qualifying Classification: 8th
Lap time: 1m15.923s (1.853s in Session 3)
Grid: 8th
"It is a very disappointing weekend for us because we
could have achieved much better results. The start of the
race was quite difficult and then I had the unlucky collision
with David Coulthard in the third corner. The tyres locked
up and I could not steer away from him. These things are normal
racing incidents that can happen. The results are unfortunate
for the team who have been working so hard to bring us forward.
But I truly believe that had we been able to follow our original
strategy, we could have reached a podium position. As you
can see from Jarno's performance, we have shown that this
is definitely possible. I am looking forward to Hungary to
make things better."
Tsutomu Tomita - Team Principal
"The results of the race were unfortunately not as good
as we were hoping for. But I have really enjoyed the race
and found it to be quite exciting to see how our two cars
could overtake many cars in the field. The most positive thing
for me, was to see Jarno move up from 20th in the back to
7th place. He even had the fastest speed of 317kmh in the
speed trap, and the drivers had the 4th and 5th fastest laps,
which show how good our pace is improving. Unfortunately for
Ralf, we had a few incidents, like his collision at the beginning
and then his drive-through penalty, which cost him a lot of
time. But he did his best to move up the field. I am very
confident and sure about our car's performance based on today's
race. We just need to make sure that this progress continues
in a positive direction for us to be competitive among the
top teams."
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