Red, hot and long day for Toyota
Red, hot and long; three words to describe the second day of Panasonic Toyota Racing's test day in Jerez. Race drivers Ralf Schumacher and Jarno Trulli were at the wheel battling the elements. As always when many teams are testing, there were quite a few red flags and cars stopping for various reasons.
Air temperatures continued to climb during the day, making for hot asphalt and a long weary day. Tomorrow should be similar, yet Ralf Schumacher and Jarno Trulli will return with new motivation to finish off the test programme before heading to France for the next Grand Prix.
Jarno Trulli "I am quite happy with today's testing. We had a trouble-free day with the car and put in quite a few laps. My programme was mainly focused on tyres as well as doing some race simulation and set-up work for Magny-Cours. It was difficult to do some long runs with the red flags we had today, but this is normal and we will make up for this tomorrow."
Ralf Schumacher "In the morning we lost some time due to various red lights and then in the afternoon, when the front suspension needed to be checked and the brakes were changed on my car. Nevertheless, we were still able to do some runs on different Bridgestone tyres in preparation for Magny-Cours. The car is feeling otherwise good and tomorrow I hope to put in more runs than we did today."
Gerd Pfeiffer, Test Team Manager "Being that the next race is at Magny-Cours, the track there is a rather well-balanced circuit in terms of set-up. So today we tried various brake configurations and suspension set-ups in addition to testing different Bridgestone compounds for this track, especially because of its smooth black tarmac. Due to it being rather hot here in Jerez, we could also take advantage of the higher temperatures by testing some cooling packages."