23/07/2005
NEWS STORY
Panasonic Toyota Racing's drivers Jarno Trulli and Ralf Schumacher will start tomorrow's German Grand Prix from 9th and 12th places on the grid following today's qualifying at Hockenheim. The two drivers put in reasonably clear laps during a competitive session with a very tight middle order of the grid. Toyota will now head into Sunday's race aiming to make the most of a difficult weekend and to get both cars into the points. The team currently stands in 4th place in the constructors' championship with a total of 54 points.
Jarno Trulli kept up his record of making the top ten of the grid at every race this year by taking 9th place in qualifying for tomorrow's German Grand Prix.
Jarno Trulli: "I had a slight problem with the brakes so I didn't have the confidence to push as hard as I would have liked. But I'm reasonably comfortable with where we are on the grid given that we've struggled for pace so far this weekend. It's hard to say how we can fare in the race but maybe some of the other cars will be on different strategies to us. We haven't had the best of times in the last two races so hopefully we can turn it around tomorrow and score some more points. We'll certainly be pushing very hard."
Ralf Schumacher will look to make the points for the third race in a row after securing a place on the 6th row during today's qualifying session at Hockenheim.
Ralf Schumacher: "That was a reasonably clean lap. The car was balanced well throughout and I made no mistakes. Perhaps I could have gained a tenth in the first sector but apart from that there were no problems. It's a very tight grid and hopefully we've made the right tyre choice for the race tomorrow. Obviously it will be a hard race from where we are but the package should work well in race conditions so we'll be doing our best to break into the points again."
Panasonic Toyota Racing hopes that Jarno and Ralf's race strategy will enable both drivers to push for a double points finish in Sunday's German Grand Prix.
Mike Gascoyne - Technical Director Chassis: "We have to be slightly disappointed with our qualifying positions. Both Jarno and Ralf put in reasonably clean laps. But it was a very close session and one or two tenths would have made a lot of difference. Still, we've aimed the weekend at our best race strategy so we'll see when the cars in front of us stop tomorrow. Looking at the times up and down the grid I certainly think we've got a race strategy that should see both cars getting into the points."