Frustrating day for Toyota

The elements once again forced a re-think for Panasonic Toyota Racing at Monza as rain lashed down at the Autodromo Nazionale, where nine of the eleven F1 teams had stayed on to take advantage of the extra rain day following lost time on Thursday.

Once again it was a case of an installation lap for Ralf Schumacher and then no meaningful testing until after a rescheduled early lunch break. The temperature increased and the sun came out for the afternoon session and Ralf was finally able to concentrate on some largely mechanical set-up work ahead of next week’s Italian Grand Prix.

Ralf Schumacher - Chassis TF107/06
Best Lap Time: 1min 24.171s
Position: 5th
Total laps: 46 Total distance: 266.478kms
“It was a little bit frustrating today and once again we lost the morning to rain. The track surface was ‘green’ once again and we lost a bit more time in the afternoon when the car stopped due to a small technical issue. I was concentrating on mechanical aspects of the set-up but at the end of the day I still felt that we had work to do. It was also difficult to make meaningful comparisons at the end of the session when someone lost an engine and oil went down at Turn 1.”

Gerd Pfeiffer, Test Team Manager “The test got off to a good start and we ran the first two days virtually without interruption and made strong progress with Jarno. He had solid confidence in the car when he left on Wednesday night and was looking forward to his home Grand Prix. Ralf, meanwhile, has been more unfortunate, with the weather wiping out both Thursday and Friday morning. It has been a long test and the team has worked well, but Ralf feels that there is still progress to be made and we will carefully analyse the data before next Friday’s first practice day at Monza.”