Jerez Test – Day 1
Location: Circuito Permanente de Jerez, Spain
Drivers: Ralf Schumacher, Franck Montagny
Track length: 4.428km
BACK TO WORK
Panasonic Toyota Racing returned to testing duties today
after a weekend break and the team continued to put the new
TF107 through its paces. Ralf Schumacher and Franck Montagny
took charge of the driving on a sunny, clear day in Spain
and they were kept busy helping the team learn more about
the new car. The team tried out several set-up options and
gained valuable data. However, progress was checked in the
afternoon as Montagny’s day ended an hour early when
his car stopped at turn six while Schumacher’s afternoon
was disrupted by suspension changes which took time.
Ralf Schumacher - Chassis TF107/701
Best Lap Time: 1min 20.254s
Position: 6th
Total laps: 55
Total distance: 243.5km
“Today wasn’t too bad. It was useful to try out
some different set-ups and see how the car reacted. The track
was cold in the morning so that made it a bit difficult because
there was not much grip and in the afternoon we made a few
suspension changes so we will have to look at the data and
see how that went. I had a positive feeling for the car so
that was good.”
Franck Montagny - Chassis TF107/703
Best Lap Time: 1min 20.409s
Position: 8th
Total laps: 46
Total distance: 203.6km
“We worked on quite a few things today which was good,
we have made some steps forward. We had a few little issues
in the afternoon which we had to solve straight away. We needed
plenty of time to analyse everything and find an answer which
is why we finished early. But the car reacted well to the
changes we made so I am quite happy. If we had put some new
tyres on we would have been able to go quite a bit faster.”
Gerd Pfeiffer, Test Team Manager
“It is still only the second week of testing with the
new TF107 so we were continuing to check various systems as
well as also working on set-up. We gained a lot of useful
information from both cars today but, as expected in testing,
there were o unfortunately caused a red flag when he suffered
a transmission problem and had to stop on the track. Ralf
had to wait during the afternoon for a minor oil spillage
around the engine to be cleaned and we also made some suspension
set-up changes which took time. Despite this, we did some
valuable work to build on what we learned at Valencia last
week.”
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