Panasonic Toyota Racing made a promising start to practice for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone on a windy, cloudy day at the birthplace of the Formula 1 World Championship. In contrast to the last race in Turkey, track temperatures were a moderate 34°C while the air temperature was a relatively chilly 17°C. With revisions to the TF109 to test before the decisive business of qualifying and the race, Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock were kept busy comparing different set-ups in the morning. In the afternoon the focus switched to the hard and soft Bridgestone Potenza tyres, last used together just two weeks ago in the Turkish Grand Prix. In Istanbul the difference between the two compounds, especially in qualifying, was not as great as anticipated but with lower track temperatures today, tyre behaviour needed re-evaluating. Both drivers completed more than a race distance over the two sessions leaving the team in good shape for the rest of the weekend.

Jarno Trulli: "I had a trouble-free couple of sessions working through the usual programme of evaluating the different tyre compounds and looking at various set-ups. The car feels pretty good but as usual here at Silverstone it was very windy. This makes it quite difficult to set-up the car and it's not ideal when it comes to evaluating different set-ups because the conditions change from lap to lap. But we had no other issues and we just need to improve the outright performance a little bit for tomorrow in order to be closer to the top. I am still optimistic."

Timo Glock: "It has been a reasonable start for us on the whole. We did quite a few laps and looked at various different set-ups. We had no serious problems but of course there are areas we need to work on before qualifying to get the maximum out of our package. The balance is not ideal at the moment but we have the chance to improve that tomorrow morning. If you look at what happened in Turkey, where we made a big step forward on Saturday morning, then we can be pretty hopeful for this race."

Dieter Gass, Chief Engineer Race and Test: "It was a positive day for us. We have got some new aerodynamic components on the car which we successfully tested. Everything looks fine, we had no technical problems so we went smoothly through our programme which is always a good way to start the weekend. In terms of tyres, these are the same compounds we had in Turkey. We don't seem to have a major worry with them for the rest of the weekend and that is good news because sometimes this year there have been occasions when it was a bit of a challenge. So now we are looking to build on this positive Friday over the rest of the weekend."

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