05/06/2009
NEWS STORY
Panasonic Toyota Racing started the Turkish Grand Prix weekend with two promising 90-minute practice sessions at the 5.338km Istanbul Park today. Thursday's rain gave way to blue skies and sunshine, with track temperatures hitting 48°C and air temperatures 28°C for the first track action of the weekend. The rarely-used Istanbul Park was dusty as expected in the morning but lap times improved as more rubber was put down during the course of the day. With a modified front wing and other aerodynamic changes to evaluate, Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock had plenty of work to do in addition to the standard set-up procedures. The soft and hard Bridgestone Potenza tyres, which were last used in Barcelona, are available this weekend so comparing their behaviour also kept the drivers busy in the afternoon. Neither driver suffered any mechanical troubles so the team completed its entire programme as planned, recording positive results.
Jarno Trulli: "We mainly concentrated on set-up work and tyre evaluation as usual on a Friday. The track was pretty dusty, especially in the morning, so we felt a little lack of grip but that was expected here and it should improve tomorrow. The new aero bits are working well and they look like a good step which bodes well for the rest of the weekend. My lap times were competitive and the long runs went well so we will see what we can do for tomorrow. I am pleased with how things went today so we should be competitive."
Timo Glock: "It was a normal Friday practice for me with a programme of long runs and also various set-up comparisons. It was a bit tricky because I didn't feel the balance of the car was exactly where I wanted it to be, especially on the soft tyres, but we will work to improve that in time for qualifying. The lap times were really close in the afternoon session and I know I had the potential to be quicker. We are stronger than we were in Monaco, which is what we expected as that track is a one-off, so we want to demonstrate that in qualifying."
Dieter Gass, Chief Engineer Race and Test: "It was a very productive day for us. We had some aero updates on the car which we used successfully and we clearly looked better than we did in Monaco, as we anticipated here. As usual in Turkey on Friday you have a very big circuit evolution and we saw that in the morning. In the afternoon, between third and 16th places all cars were within half a second and that means that only a difference of 10kg of fuel would completely mix up the pecking order. So it is difficult to draw conclusions yet but we are definitely on a different level of performance compared to Monaco so we can be optimistic for the weekend."