Toyota satisfied with Silverstone test
Panasonic Toyota Racing today completed its week’s testing work at Silverstone. The Summer Solstice may be the longest day of the year but the teams soon found that in Britain that is no guarantee of seeing much of the sun.
Clouds covered the sky for most of the day but the worst of the forecast rain failed to materialise. The morning session took place on a dry track and the day’s heaviest shower conveniently took place over the lunch break. Jarno Trulli was again in action for Toyota, comparing tyres for the British Grand Prix and doing other work on systems and suspension. Despite regular interruptions for red flags he put in a total of 70 laps and finished with the 5th fastest time. Toyota will next make an appearance at this weekend’s Festival of Speed, which takes place at the historic motor racing venue of Goodwood in the south of England. The team’s next competitive action will be at the French Grand Prix, scheduled for July 1 at Magny-Cours.
Jarno Trulli – Chassis TF107/03
Best lap time: 1m 21.703s
Position: 5th
Total laps: 70
Total distance: 359.9km
“This week has gone pretty well for us. We’ve concentrated mainly on preparation for next month’s British Grand Prix here but we’ve also done work in preparation for the coming race at Magny-Cours next weekend. Today I did some tyre comparisons and put some mileage on some other systems on the car. We’ve been reasonably quick here over the last three days but all that matters is what you can achieve at the races. So far the season hasn’t gone as well as we’d hoped but we will continue to push to get the best out of the package in the next few weeks. I’m looking forward to coming to race at Silverstone because I believe that we should perform well here. But we still have three weeks to go and anything can change before then, including the weather.”
Gerd Pfeiffer, Test Team Manager “We were expecting more rain today so we were prepared to do some wet weather work. Instead the track stayed dry for most of the hours of running so that was lucky. Jarno spent the morning doing tyre comparisons, working on different set-ups and looking at the suspension and other systems. In the afternoon the continued dry weather meant that we were able to do some work on aerodynamics and different weight distributions. The only interruptions today were caused by the frequent red flags but we made it through everything we had planned. Overall it has been a successful week and we look forward to using what we have learned here in the coming races.”
