Spanish Grand Prix – Free Practice Round-Up
DAY OF TWO HALVES
Panasonic Toyota Racing began its preparations for the Spanish
Grand Prix with three hours of Friday practice under sunny
skies at the Circuit de Catalunya. Last week’s test
at the same Barcelona track was interrupted by rain on two
days out of four but track temperatures today approached 50°
Celsius. Similar good weather is expected to continue for
the rest of the race weekend. The test here gave most teams
a head start on set-up but there was still work to do today.
Race drivers Ralf Schumacher and Jarno Trulli had a productive
morning and set quick times. But the afternoon was disrupted
by mechanical problems and the pair ended the second session
with the 17th and 18th fastest times respectively. The team
will now analyse the data collected as it prepares for tomorrow’s
qualifying and Sunday’s race.
Ralf Schumacher (Car 11, Chassis TF107/05)
First Session 8th 23 laps completed Lap Time: 1m 22.843s
(+0.963s)
Second Session 17th 28 laps completed Lap Time: 1m 23.219s
(+1.822s)
“We had a good morning but we had some mechanical problems
during the second session that we needed to sort out before
we could continue our programme. That cost us a bit of time
but generally we went through most of our plan and looked
at the things we wanted to. So in the end it was not much
of a problem and hopefully we will have a good day tomorrow.
We had a positive test here last week and I made some progress
with setting up the car to my liking. It seems to be working
well again so I remain hopeful of an improvement.”
Jarno Trulli (Car 12, Chassis TF107/04)
First Session 7th 28 laps completed Lap Time: 1m 22.740s
(+0.860s)
Second Session 18th 42 laps completed Lap Time: 1m 23.307s
(+1.910s)
“That was a solid day’s work but as usual at
Barcelona the wind made things difficult out there. All the
teams have made a big effort for the first European race so
this weekend we’ll get a clearer idea of what direction
the championship is taking. Barcelona is a good reference
circuit and our car behaved well at last week’s test
here. But everyone was running different programmes today
so we will have to wait for tomorrow to find out where we
all stand. I hope we can continue our run of good results
and make the points again.”
Dieter Gass – Chief Engineer Race and Test
“Like most teams we have come here with a major aerodynamic
upgrade including new wings, engine cover and floor. We had
quite a promising session this morning, making it very smoothly
through our programme and setting some competitive lap times.
But we struggled a bit in the afternoon session with both
cars. This is partly because we were concentrating on long
run preparation for the race but we also had some mechanical
issues on the car which we have to look into. Nevertheless,
we have collected all the data we need about the tyres and
based on our morning performance we are confident for the
rest of the weekend.”
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