Trulli joins the action at Jerez

Panasonic Toyota Racing was back on track at the Circuito Permanente de Jerez in Spain today for its penultimate day of testing in 2006. Next season's Bridgestone tyres were again the focus of the day's work and Jarno Trulli got his first taste of the new rubber at Jerez.

Franck Montagny was back behind the wheel again for a second consecutive day but he suffered a frustrating morning when a minor issue needed time-consuming repairs. He returned to the car in the afternoon to continue where he left off yesterday, gathering more information on the new tyres and trying out different set-ups. Trulli was able to go through his programme with no problems, completing almost 100 laps, and he will return to action again tomorrow, when he will be joined by Olivier Panis, who makes his final appearance in Formula 1 after 12 years.

Jarno Trulli - Chassis TF106B/09
Best Lap Time: 1m20.244s
Total laps: 93
Total distance: 411.8kms
"We had a normal test today and it went well. I managed to complete a lot of laps and I was mainly trying different things on the car to find a good balance. It was my first time on the new tyres at Jerez and they are obviously much slower than last year's tyres were around here. There is a lot of work we need to do to understand them fully but so far so good."

Franck Montagny - Chassis TF106B/07
Best Lap Time: 1m20.493s
Total laps: 55
Total distance: 243.5kms
"Today I was expecting a good day and it was not. We stopped after three laps with a minor issue on the car, something we never had before and took quite a long time to fix. I didn't go out again until the afternoon so we didn't have a lot of time to do the set-up work but we did the comparison work we wanted to do and that is a good thing. We carried on from yesterday but we still have plenty of work to do to find a perfect set-up on the car."

"It was a shame for Franck that the repair inside the fuel tank this morning took so long but unfortunately a small issue sometimes takes a long time to put right. The mechanics worked hard to get him out on track after lunch and he was able to continue with the tyre testing he started yesterday. Jarno had a good day testing tyres and set-up and we are pleased with the information we got. Both drivers did some long runs and the tyres seemed quite consistent."