Toyota adapts programme due to heavy rain
Panasonic Toyota Racing concluded its three-day test at the Circuito Permanente de Jerez today under a cloudy sky on a damp day in Spain. Overnight rain left the track wet this morning and showers throughout the day meant wet or extreme wet Bridgestone tyres were the only option for Jarno Trulli and Franck Montagny.
Track conditions changed regularly but the team pressed ahead with work on wet set-ups, as well as systems checks on the TF107, in particular an updated transmission, which Trulli put through its paces. He completed almost 400kms and gained plenty of data which the team will now use to take advantage of the upgrade’s full potential. After a short weekend, the test team is back in action on Monday in Barcelona where work will continue on the updated transmission.
Jarno Trulli - Chassis TF107/703
Best lap time: 1min 30.981s
Position: 8th
Total laps: 89
Total distance: 394kms
“We put a lot of mileage on the transmission update which is good. The weather was pretty poor today so we were not really concentrating on performance or setting fast lap times. That was especially true for myself because with the update we just wanted to do as many laps as possible to learn about how it performs. We could not optimise our lap times because of the wet track but we at least got a lot of information which was the only real target for today.”
Franck Montagny - Chassis TF107/701
Best lap time: 1min 31.027s
Position: 9th
Total laps: 75
Total distance: 332.1kms
“It was an interesting day because we did a lot of laps and that was just what we needed. We were able to evaluate a lot of information from the wet and extreme wet tyres after working on settings and tyre pressures. Now if it is raining in Melbourne for the first race we will be well prepared! The weather was changing so it was difficult to get a good lap time or really compare the set-ups. We had some small issues during the day but nothing major, just the normal things that happen in testing. I am happy, it was not a bad day.”
Gerd Pfeiffer, Test Team Manager “We expected a lot of rain today and unfortunately that is what we got. With such bad weather, we had to adapt our programme and we looked at car set-up in wet conditions, as we as gaining more data about the behaviour of the extreme wet tyres. One of the main points for today was to run checks on the transmission update we were testing and Jarno did a lot of laps without any trouble. He brought in some useful information which we will now analyse, so that went well. Franck was evaluating various set-up options in wet conditions and he also did a lot of laps which is very helpful to us."
