Monaco Grand Prix – Free Practice Round-Up
OH WATER FEELING!
Panasonic Toyota Racing got its Monaco Grand Prix weekend
underway today with two 90-minute practice sessions around
the twisty Principality streets. As is traditional in Monaco,
practice began on Thursday and Jarno was the first driver
to set a lap time. However, after half an hour, the team’s
progress was interrupted when a major water leak in the garage
disabled the telemetry screens. But that did not keep Jarno
and Ralf away from the track, with the team improvising to
ensure little time was lost due to the burst water pipe. In
between the two sessions, the team worked hard to restore
all functions and second practice started as normal. Jarno
improved his lap time steadily during the 90 minutes and ended
the session an encouraging fourth but it was a different story
for Ralf. In a session littered with accidents, Ralf caught
the kerb on the exit of the Swimming Pool section and lost
his nose cone in the barrier with a minute remaining. He finished
20th but the team is confident of an improvement in qualifying
tomorrow.
Ralf Schumacher (Car 11, Chassis TF107/05)
First Session 20th 24 laps completed Lap Time: 1m 19.799s
(+2.826s)
Second Session 20th 38 laps completed Lap Time: 1m 18.662s
(+2.722s)
“It was not the happiest day for me. There was not
as much grip as I would have liked and the car was sliding
a bit. But we will work on our set-up before qualifying and
I am optimistic we can find an improvement. Unfortunately
I did not quite get to the end of the second practice. I caught
the kerb quite hard and that put me into the tyre barrier
and damaged the car a bit. I was on a strong lap so my final
position does not really show what we were capable of today.
I am fine after the crash and the team will be able to repair
the damage in time for tomorrow’s sessions.”
Jarno Trulli (Car 12, Chassis TF107/04)
First Session 19th 22 laps completed Lap Time: 1m 19.496s
(+2.523s)
Second Session 4th 39 laps completed Lap Time: 1m 16.354s
(+0.414s)
“Today was a bit difficult in general because we had
the odd problem and also some bad luck this morning in the
first session. The burst pipe this morning cost us a bit of
time and also affected our data as well. But the guys did
well to fix everything and we went through our programme quite
successfully in the afternoon. The car is still a bit difficult
to drive and we still have to work a lot in order to make
it better. I am missing some grip and we have some graining
on the tyres but I was pleased with my lap time in the second
session. All in all it looks quite promising and I am hopeful
we can build on this. You can never know how things will go
at Monaco but I am always confident and I am hopeful of a
strong result.”
Dieter Gass – Chief Engineer Race and Test
“It was a day of mixed emotions. First of all I’d
like to say what a good job the guys did repairing the damage
done by the burst water pipe in the garage this morning. They
worked exceptionally hard to get things working properly again.
On the track, we had a very smooth run with Jarno. We went
through our complete programme and got the information that
we wanted to and we are in good shape. Unfortunately Ralf
went too hard on the kerbs in the last chicane when he was
on his quickest lap of the day. He crashed into the barrier
and that meant he could not show what he and the car are capable
of so his position is not representative. From here we are
going to analyse the data and make the best out of it for
Saturday. It has been the start we expected and we are confident
for qualifying and the race.”
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