Toyota look to build on strong start of the weekend

Following Timo Glock’s heavy crash in the Australian Grand Prix, the team flew out a replacement chassis to Kuala Lumpur as the spare for this weekend’s event. Glock and Trulli had a smooth day at the Sepang International Circuit and the drivers hope to have a good weekend with a strong result.

Jarno Trulli (Car 11, Chassis TF108-02)
Summary: Trouble-free sessions, took 6th quickest in P2
P1 10th Best Lap Time: 1m 37.540s (+1.796s) Laps: 24
P2 6th Best Lap Time: 1m 36.493s (+1.438s) Laps: 38
“In general that was a smooth day and I’m pleased with how things went. We still have some problems to solve on the car to be more competitive but we made some changes between P1 and P2 and that made a big difference. It looked better and we made a good step. Obviously it is still Friday so it is difficult to judge. But we normally perform pretty well here so I’m confident that we can bounce back after the disappointment of Melbourne. The only problem is that the rain can be very heavy and this weekend’s forecast is mixed. I would prefer a dry race but we will have to deal with whatever weather comes our way.”

Timo Glock (Car 12, Chassis TF108-01)
Summary: No technical problems on his way to 17th in P2
P1 14th Best Lap Time: 1m 37.782s (+2.038s) Laps: 27
P2 17th Best Lap Time: 1m 37.512s (+2.457s) Laps: 35
“The car doesn’t feel too bad but I haven’t yet got the most out of the tyres on the first lap. I’m also sliding a bit too much overall. I’m not sure what the problem is so we will have to look into that overnight. Thankfully I have no lasting effects from last week’s crash and my hand feels fine. Our pace was strong last week and I have confidence in the new car but we still have to work to improve. We are in a tight group of teams so we have to get everything right to come away with a strong result.”

Dieter Gass, Chief Engineer Race and Test: “This is the kind of Friday I really like. We went through our programme without any issues on both cars. We also had a very good exchange of information between the cars on the set-up work and we gained some interesting results which we were able to transfer from one car to the other. We collected all the tyre data that we wanted and Jarno had a very good long run at the end of the session. Timo is still struggling to get the best out of the tyres on the first lap but I’m sure with a careful check on the data tonight we will improve that. The circuit improved a lot through the day but the new track surface has not made a big difference. Now we will look to build on this strong start over the rest of the weekend.”