Malaysian Grand Prix – Free Practice Round-Up
THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY
Preparations for Sunday’s Malaysian Grand Prix began
today for Panasonic Toyota Racing with three hours of practice
at the Sepang circuit. On a sweltering Good Friday in the
outskirts of Malaysia’s capital city Kuala Lumpur, track
temperatures topped 50 degrees Celsius. The 2007 season’s
extended Friday sessions allow plenty of time for preparation
and the team took full advantage. Toyota’s race drivers
Ralf Schumacher and Jarno Trulli put in over 100 laps between
them and they ended the day with the 8th and 16th fastest
times respectively. The team will now analyse today’s
data in preparation for tomorrow’s qualifying and the
race on Easter Sunday.
Ralf Schumacher (Car 11, Chassis TF107/03)
First Session 9th 22 laps completed Lap Time: 1m 37.052s
(+2.080s)
Second Session 8th 27 laps completed Lap Time: 1m 36.760s
(+0.980s)
“That was a reasonable day and good preparation for
the rest of the weekend. It’s obviously hot here and
the conditions push the drivers to the limit. But I like the
heat and last week’s testing was a good preparation
for the weekend. Despite so many cars running here, the circuit
was still very low on grip today. Still, we made it through
our programme of work with no problems. We are comfortable
with the track and the tyres were also working well. It’s
difficult to judge true performance after the first race but
our goal is to get two cars into the top ten again and hopefully
to take more points.”
Jarno Trulli (Car 12, Chassis TF107/04)
First Session 7th 25 laps completed Lap Time: 1m 36.597s
(+1.625s)
Second Session 16th 34 laps completed Lap Time: 1m 37.712s
(+1.932s)
“Since the beginning of the day I’ve been struggling
so we will have to look into that tonight. The track was short
of grip early on and I found myself sliding with all four
wheels. The car has been inconsistent and it has not responded
to the set-up changes we’ve made. And while the track
improved I actually got worse with the same set-up. So something
strange is happening and now we need to investigate why. Still,
I like this track and I have always performed pretty well
here. The weather is changeable and our forecasts say we may
yet see some thunderstorms during the weekend.”Dieter
Gass – Chief Engineer Race and Test
“We got a lot done in the two sessions so that was
a productive day. For both cars to run trouble-free was good,
especially in the hot conditions that we have here. Even though
we tested here last week we still had a lot of things to do
and we went through our programme quite well. But you wouldn’t
have known there had been a test last week from the track
which was as short of grip as usual on a Friday here. Both
cars were sliding a lot and it was not easy to find a balance
in these conditions. But given how many laps we have completed,
we have a lot of data to look at tonight to see what changes
we can make to improve our cars further for tomorrow. In Australia
there was quite a big difference between the two tyres but
here there is a far smaller gap and both tyres are well suited
to the circuit. That means we will have to work out how best
to use them over the weekend.”
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