Malaysian Grand Prix - Preview
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After its point-scoring start to the season, Panasonic Toyota
Racing heads to the Malaysian Grand Prix at Sepang this weekend
confident of another positive result. Ralf Schumacher scored
a point for eighth place in Australia at the season-opener,
with Jarno Trulli ninth after a competitive race for the team.
The searing heat and stifling humidity of Malaysia makes this
weekend’s Grand Prix one of the toughest on the calendar,
with air temperatures pushing 35°, while the track is
a challenging mix of high-speed corners and tight hairpins
to test the drivers. But after a week of testing at Sepang,
the team is well prepared for the task ahead. The Malaysian
Grand Prix has a special place in Toyota’s history after
Jarno scored the team’s first Formula 1 podium at Sepang
in 2005. Now, as Toyota marks 50 years in motorsport, the
team is hoping for another result to celebrate.
Ralf Schumacher (Car 11): “Compared
to Melbourne, the conditions in Malaysia are completely different.
The heat and humidity we experience there is a real challenge
for everyone in the team, not just the drivers. I have trained
for the heat and I have been able to adjust to the climate
with the testing at Sepang so I am in good shape for the race
weekend, there are no worries about that. I like the circuit,
there are some opportunities for overtaking there and it is
a new track so the facilities are really great. Also, I have
had some good races there and I am hoping for another this
year. We made a reasonable start to the season with my point
in Australia but we want to be more competitive and hopefully
the work we did at our test last week will move us closer
to the front. I am optimistic we can be fighting for more
points this weekend.”
Jarno Trulli (Car 12): “Sepang is
one of the modern kinds of circuit on the Formula 1 calendar
and the facilities we have there are very good. As a track
it is an interesting technical challenge and the heat and
humidty make it one of the hardest races of the season. We
have been testing already at Sepang last week which will help
us with set-up information and hopefully we will have more
performance from the car as well. I have very good memories
of Malaysia because I achieved Toyota’s first Formula
1 podium there in 2005 and that is probably the best race
of my time with the team so far. It would be great if we could
repeat that kind of result but we know we still have some
work to do to catch up with the top teams because in Australia
we were still a bit away. However, after a difficult winter
of testing it was good to start the season with a competitive
performance in Australia and I hope we can have a strong result
in Malaysia.”
Pascal Vasselon – Senior General Manager Chassis:
“Sepang will be a difficult weekend for all
teams because the circuit is hard on every element of the
car. The high temperatures are very demanding on the cooling
package, the tyres and the brakes. In terms of set-up it is
quite tricky as there is an interesting mix of slow and high
speed corners. We will get a better idea in Malaysia of how
competitive each team is because Melbourne is historically
quite an unusual race in terms of performance. That is especially
true when it comes to tyres. In Malaysia we do not expect
to have the kind of warming up problems you usually see in
Australia, so this is the first race which will show how the
car behaves when the tyres are working well. We did reasonably
well in Australia but we want to achieve more and we’ll
be looking for more performance in Malaysia, where we expect
to score more points.”
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