Barcelona Test Day 1
Location: Circuit de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
Drivers: Jarno Trulli, Kamui Kobayashi
Track Length: 4.655km
WINTER CHILL
Following two weeks of work in the heat of Bahrain, it was
a return to winter testing in its truest form for the Panasonic
Toyota Racing team today. Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya
provided a cold, grey setting for the start of this week’s
running. There was light rain around the circuit at regular
intervals throughout the day and temperatures only just made
it into double figures. The team was planning to carry out
comparative work on the TF108’s new aerodynamics package.
The unsettled weather made that difficult but Jarno Trulli
still put in 57 laps. Third driver Kamui Kobayashi had a quieter
day’s work because limits to mileage and tyres meant
there was little point in running in these conditions. Toyota
will continue testing at the Circuit de Catalunya tomorrow
with Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock driving.
Jarno Trulli – Chassis TF108-04
Best lap time: 1m 33.283s
Position: 6th
Total laps: 57
Total distance: 265.3km
“Today was wet so it wasn’t an ideal day for testing.
We were concentrating on testing some new parts for our new
aerodynamics package. We made reasonable progress and collected
some useful data but it’s still too early to figure
anything out yet. The track was changing throughout the day
so direct comparisons were hard. In conditions like we had
today we didn’t do much mileage because we wanted to
save some more miles and tyres for the next few days.”
Kamui Kobayashi – Chassis TF108-01
Best lap time: N/A
Position: 8th
Total laps: 1
Total distance: 4.7km
“That was a short day’s work for me. I put in
an installation lap this morning and spent the rest of the
day waiting for the weather to improve. We have limits on
testing mileage so it was decided that we could not use up
laps in conditions like these. That’s the way testing
goes sometimes but at least I have been able to recover fully
after a long trip from Indonesia yesterday.”
Dieter Gass, Chief Engineer Race and Test
“The main aim of these two weeks of testing at Barcelona
is to evaluate the aerodynamics package that we are scheduled
to use in the first race. We have worked hard to get that
ready early enough to try some set-up work and understand
the new parts before we get to Melbourne. So it’s frustrating
that we have had to curtail our running today. The reliability
of the TF108 so far means that we have already used up a lot
of testing mileage so we will limit our running in the wet.
Still, we would like to have completed more laps today but
we didn’t have enough tyres available. We expect tomorrow
to be another wet day but Thursday could see some dry running.”
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