Malaysian Grand Prix - Qualifying Round-Up
Panasonic Toyota Racing goes into tomorrow's Malaysian Grand
Prix with hope of a strong performance despite a disappointing
result in today's qualifying. At a sweltering Sepang circuit
on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, the Toyota cars showed improved
pace compared to last week's Bahrain Grand Prix. Unfortunately
Ralf Schumacher suffered an engine failure when he was challenging
strongly for the top ten so he will start from the back of
the grid. Jarno Trulli was suffering from understeer, managing
13th quickest in Session 2 but he will start from 9th place
due to a number of engine changes by the higher finishers.
Toyota will now push hard to salvage a strong result in the
race.
IN THE MELTING POT
Jarno Trulli will start the Malaysian Grand Prix from 9th
place on the grid despite struggling with understeer today.
Jarno Trulli (Car 8, Chassis TF106/04)
GRID: 9th
Free Practice Session 3: 10th
Lap Time: 1m35.690s (+1.564s)
Laps: 19
Qualifying Session 1: 13th
Lap Time: 1m35.517s (+0.981s)
Laps: 6
Qualifying Session 2: 13th
Lap Time: 1m34.702s (+1.175s)
Laps: 6
"I'm obviously glad that we are showing a better performance
here compared to Bahrain and especially that we're starting
to get some information about how the tyres work. Obviously
this afternoon was a difficult one for me because I suffered
from major understeer throughout the sessions. This morning
during free practice I tried some different directions with
my set-up for the team. That meant I was unable to prepare
my set-up for qualifying and the race as I normally would.
Nonetheless I hope we can race well tomorrow. We will analyse
the data and I hope we can sort out the balance overnight.
That way we can look forward to a better Sunday afternoon
than we had in Bahrain."
WE HEARD SEPANG
This afternoon's engine failure will push Ralf Schumacher
to the back of the grid for tomorrow's Malaysian GP.
Ralf Schumacher (Car 7, Chassis TF106/05)
GRID: 22nd
Free Practice Session 3: 7th
Lap Time: 1m35.040s (+0.914s
Laps: 7
Qualifying Session 1: 8th
Lap Time: 1m35.214s (+0.678s)
Laps: 7
Qualifying Session 2: 10th
Lap Time: 1m34.586s (+1.059s)
Laps: 3
"It was a pity how things turned out today because we
were showing much better pace than last week. It would have
been good to be in the top ten here and I'm sure we could
have improved further. We didn't have any warning about the
engine until it suddenly let go. That can happen – especially
at a tough circuit for engines like Sepang after we put in
so much mileage at Bahrain. But at least our pace is looking
a lot better. We expected that but now we can be sure about
that fact as we can concentrate on tomorrow. Now I'm looking
forward to a good race. We're starting at the back but we
had some pretty good long runs in practice so we will try
our best. It will be difficult but anything is possible."
FAR EASTERN PROMISE
Toyota will push hard to gain ground in tomorrow's race safe
in the knowledge that the cars are performing better.
Mike Gascoyne – Technical Director Chassis
"Ultimately that was a disappointing end to qualifying,
but we also showed a lot of promise. The cars today looked
much more competitive than we were in Bahrain, and the level
of performance we showed is pretty much what we expected from
the car before the season started. We made the tyre work better
than in Bahrain by a combination of changes we made and the
conditions here. Unfortunately Ralf's engine failure means
that he couldn't improve after one lap of the second session.
Jarno lost some set-up time this morning so we have to accept
the blame for him not being in the top ten. Despite the results,
it was very good to show that when we have the tyre working
we have a competitive package. We now have to make sure we
do that 100 percent of the time. Tomorrow we have to look
for a strong performance and aim to pick up points."
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