Transmission problem for Montagny

Panasonic Toyota Racing returned to testing duties today after a weekend break and the team continued to put the new TF107 through its paces. Ralf Schumacher and Franck Montagny took charge of the driving on a sunny, clear day in Spain and they were kept busy helping the team learn more about the new car.

The team tried out several set-up options and gained valuable data. However, progress was checked in the afternoon as Montagny’s day ended an hour early when his car stopped at turn six while Schumacher’s afternoon was disrupted by suspension changes which took time.

Ralf Schumacher - Chassis TF107/701
Best Lap Time: 1min 20.254s
Position: 6th
Total laps: 55
Total distance: 243.5km
“Today wasn’t too bad. It was useful to try out some different set-ups and see how the car reacted. The track was cold in the morning so that made it a bit difficult because there was not much grip and in the afternoon we made a few suspension changes so we will have to look at the data and see how that went. I had a positive feeling for the car so that was good.”

Franck Montagny - Chassis TF107/703
Best Lap Time: 1min 20.409s
Position: 8th
Total laps: 46
Total distance: 203.6km
“We worked on quite a few things today which was good, we have made some steps forward. We had a few little issues in the afternoon which we had to solve straight away. We needed plenty of time to analyse everything and find an answer which is why we finished early. But the car reacted well to the changes we made so I am quite happy. If we had put some new tyres on we would have been able to go quite a bit faster.”

Gerd Pfeiffer, Test Team Manager “It is still only the second week of testing with the new TF107 so we were continuing to check various systems as well as also working on set-up. We gained a lot of useful information from both cars today but, as expected in testing, there were one or two issues which cost us time. Franck unfortunately caused a red flag when he suffered a transmission problem and had to stop on the track. Ralf had to wait during the afternoon for a minor oil spillage around the engine to be cleaned and we also made some suspension set-up changes which took time. Despite this, we did some valuable work to build on what we learned at Valencia last week.”