US Grand Prix – Free Practice Round-Up
BIRTHDAY HARD
Panasonic Toyota Racing today began its preparations for
Sunday's US Grand Prix on a hot but cloudy day at the Indianapolis
Motor Speedway. There was no repeat of last year's dramatic
Friday of practice but it was a challenging day for Toyota's
race drivers Ralf Schumacher and Jarno Trulli. They both suffered
technical problems and they were unable to complete their
work on set-up and tyre comparisons. There was more to cheer
for the drivers from the football World Cup. In between the
sessions Ralf celebrated his 31st birthday by watching his
native Germany defeat Argentina on penalties. Immediately
after the second session, Jarno's home nation Italy took the
lead against Ukraine as they fought for the right to play
Germany in the semi-finals.
Jarno Trulli (Car 8, Chassis TF106/08B)
First Session Classification: 17th, 2 laps completed
No lap time
Second Session Classification: 23rd, 13 laps completed
Lap Time: 1m14.449s (+2.436s)
"It was a difficult day due to some problems with the
sensors on my car. We also had a lot of graining on our tyres
and I had some understeer. We tried to put in a long run in
order to understand that better but it has been a disrupted
day's work for us. It's hard to predict how we will get on
here because it's another track where we do no testing. But
while we still have some work to do on reliability, our car
is improving with every race. If we get the right conditions
and we can get the most out of our tyres then we can expect
to be competitive."
Ralf Schumacher (Car 7, Chassis TF106/07B)
First Session Classification: 18th, 2 laps completed
No lap time
Second Session Classification: 27th, 10 laps completed
Lap Time: 1m15.063s (+3.050s)
"The circuit was very slippery today and unfortunately
we couldn't complete our programme of work because we had
a lot of vibrations on our car. We tried to rectify the problem
but it returned towards the end of the second session. So
that meant we were unable to put in a lot of laps today and
tonight we will need to double-check what is causing the issue.
At one point Sato lost a piece of bodywork from his Super
Aguri in front of me and I was hit but it doesn't seem to
have caused any damage. Now we have to look to tackle these
problems for the rest of the weekend."
Dieter Gass – Chief Engineer Race and Test
"We had a number of different problems on the two cars
so it was a difficult day's work for us. Nonetheless we still
managed to achieve most today's planned programme although
we have not been able to complete our tyre evaluation as we
would have liked. Now we have to look at the data we do have
and decide on what changes to make for tomorrow. After Jarno's
good result in Canada last week we should achieve a similar
performance here. So we expect to be competitive in qualifying
and the race."
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