Location: Sepang International Circuit, Malaysia
Driver: Franck Montagny
Track length: 5.543km
ONE MAN SHOW
Panasonic Toyota Racing braved heat and humidity on the opening
day of a three-day test at Sepang, the venue for next month’s
Malaysian Grand Prix. Under the 2007 testing agreement, teams
are only allowed to use one car at tests during the season
so Franck Montagny was the sole Toyota driver in action today.
However, even with just one car, the team was still kept busy
as Franck tried out many different set-ups in preparation
for the Malaysian race. After a solid start to the season
with eighth and ninth respectively for Ralf Schumacher and
Jarno Trulli in Australia, the team is also pushing for more
performance from the TF107 and Franck made progress on that
front in the morning. However, a drive train failure just
before lunchtime caused Franck to stop on the circuit and
he lost time in the afternoon as repairs were carried out.
He was back on the track to continue set-up comparisons later
in the afternoon and that work will be continued by Ralf Schumacher
tomorrow.
Franck Montagny - Chassis TF107/03
Best Lap Time: 1min 37.260s
Position: 6th
Total laps: 74
Total distance: 410.182km
“It was not a bad day today, even if we did have a
little problem when I stopped out on the circuit. It took
a little bit of time to resolve that but in general the car
is looking quite good at the moment. We worked on different
set-ups with these tyres and I think we are making good progress.
Now we just have to work more on our set-ups to be sure we
are going in the right direction. I am pretty content with
the car on this track and in the hot weather, it is very drivable
and there are no major problems.”
Gerd Pfeiffer, Test Team Manager
“Today was a mixed start to our test at Sepang. The
conditions here are very different to those we experienced
in our pre-season tests in Europe but the team has adapted
and we were able to do some useful work in the morning. Obviously,
with the Malaysian Grand Prix so soon after this test, we
concentrated mainly on finding a set-up for our car on this
track. As well as that, we are continually pushing for more
performance and today we got more information which should
help us. We lost some time with the drive train failure early
in the afternoon and that took a while to repair. But the
team worked hard to get the car back on track, despite the
tough weather conditions, and we resumed our programme in
the afternoon.”
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