British Grand Prix - Race Round-Up
WHAT A COPSE OUT
It was a hard Sunday's work for Panasonic Toyota Racing at
the British Grand Prix. On another hot day at Silverstone,
Ralf Schumacher was confident of a good afternoon from 7th
place on the grid but his race was cut short within seconds
of the start. On the exit of Copse the German was pushed into
a spin by Scott Speed's Toro Rosso. As he veered across the
track he was collected by Mark Webber's Williams, putting
both drivers out of the race. Jarno Trulli had it all to do
after yesterday's engine failure in qualifying left him at
the back of the grid. He made a storming start to gain several
places on the first lap. The team called him into the pits
early to escape traffic and he made further gains but despite
battling hard he finished outside the points in 11th. Toyota
is scheduled to continue testing its new TF106B package at
Monza this week in preparation for the Canadian Grand Prix
in a fortnight's time.
Jarno Trulli (Car 8, Chassis TF106/08B)
Race Classification: 11th
Gap: +1 lap (from race winner)
Qualifying Classification: 22nd
No lap time
Grid: 22nd
"It was always going to be a hard day's work out there
from the back of the grid, but I enjoyed it. Silverstone is
never the easiest place to overtake but I still made it past
a lot of cars at the start and over the first three or four
laps. The car was well balanced and I was fighting really
hard throughout. Thanks to the team's good strategy we were
able to gain some more positions at the first pit stop. It's
very hard to stay close to the car in front here so we couldn't
really expect to score points from where we were. But nevertheless
I'm happy both with my own performance and with that of the
TF106B which looks like a definite step forward."
Ralf Schumacher (Car 7, Chassis TF106/07B)
Race Classification: DNF
Qualifying Classification: 7th
Time: 1m21.073s (+0.820s in Session 3)
Grid: 7th
"Unfortunately that was just one of those things that
happen in racing. It all began with my very bad start. I lost
too many positions and found myself in traffic. That's how
these things can kick off because in a mess like that no one
really has any space. I had cars all around me so it was really
difficult to see exactly what happened but I was hit from
behind. That sent me into a spin, which meant that I couldn't
help veering into Mark's path. It was a racing incident and
no one is to blame because no one does anything like that
on purpose. But it's the second time in a row that we have
struggled off the line so we should now work hard on improving
that."
Tsutomu Tomita - Team Principal
"On Friday the team atmosphere was very good due to the
performance of the car and the tyres here. But things started
to go wrong with Jarno's engine failure in qualifying and
when Ralf was hit on the opening lap today it meant both of
our cars were effectively out of contention. We had been working
hard on our starts in the last few days so it was a surprise
that Ralf's car was so slow to get away and we will definitely
have to investigate what happened. It was a pity because considering
the strategy we had he was clearly heavier than the cars in
front of him so he was very competitive in qualifying. We
knew we had to be aggressive with Jarno and everything worked
as expected. He had a very good start and first lap and our
strategy was to pit him early to take advantage of the good
lap times we were expecting on new tyres. At the first stop
it worked fine and took him past Coulthard. We tried the same
thing at the second stop with Barrichello and it would have
worked until he hit traffic. Jarno was happy with his car,
he pushed hard and it was almost impossible for him to have
done any better. His lap times were very encouraging, particularly
in the second stint. So the pace of our cars is getting closer
to the top teams. Now we just need to keep pushing our development
and reliability in order to catch up with them."
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