29/07/2006
NEWS STORY
Panasonic Toyota Racing will head into tomorrow's German Grand Prix with unfortunate results after today's hour of qualifying at the Hockenheimring. After having an engine failure on Jarno Trulli's car during the third practice session, he went into qualifying pushing hard during Q1, but the team decided to save the tyres during Q2 and Jarno only went out once. He will now start from the 22nd place after having to drop back 10 positions on the grid, due to his engine change. Ralf on the other hand had a somewhat good day performing well in Q1 and Q2. However after securing a good qualifying time and 3rd place, he collided with Pedro de la Rosa, causing him to return to the garage. The team worked as fast as possible so that Ralf could go out again and as a result, he was able move to up to 8th place. Although Jarno will be starting from the back, he is still motivated to make the most of his race and fight to the front. Ralf will take advantage of his starting position to collect as many points as possible to improve the team's championship rankings.
Ralf Schumacher: "The weekend was going well for me until Q3, when the unfortunate collision with de la Rosa caused me to lose a lot of time. It looked to me that he was opening the gap for me to overtake on the inside and then he just turned in the last moment, where I could not react anymore. These things can happen and are just normal racing incidents. It was just a shame because the performance until then was good and I was in third position. But I really thank the guys for working fast to get the car out again so that I move up to 8th place. I think we really could have qualified much better for tomorrow, but this position can also be promising for attaining points."
Jarno Trulli: "This weekend seems to be challenging for me. Yesterday I could not go out as much during practice and then things started out problematic today during the third practice session. I went out to do some installation laps and noticed that the engine was feeling strange and then had to stop the car. The engine needed to be changed out and therefore decided to prepare the T-Car to save time in order to be ready for qualifying. Q1 started well for me and my pace was really good. The T-Car set-up was feeling ok, but during Q2 we decided to go out only once. It will be a difficult fight from the back, but I am confident we can make the best of it and push to the front."
Pascal Vasselon - Senior General Manager Chassis: "Unfortunately we had an unexpected engine failure on Jarno's car during the third practice session. We decided to change to the T-Car to be ready in time for the qualifying sessions. Obviously today's qualifying session was quite difficult for us and did not go as we planned. We were expecting better results, and hoped to be as competitive as in Magny Cours with both cars in the top six. We started quite well with Jarno in Q1 having a fast time, but we decided to only go out once in Q2 to save new tyres. With Ralf everything was going fine until his contact with de la Rosa. In the end Ralf did a good job taking 8th place with the fuel load that he had. We look forward to an interesting race tomorrow and a hard fight for points."
To check out our Hockenheim qualifying gallery, click here