21/08/2009
NEWS STORY
Panasonic Toyota Racing was back in action today after the four-week summer break with the first practice sessions for the European Grand Prix on the streets of Valencia in Spain. Under clear blue skies and a hot summer sun temperatures soared, reaching 30°C and creating track temperatures of 50°C. But both Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock had worked out during the break, as well as relaxing among family and friends, so they were prepared for the challenge. A trouble-free morning session saw both drivers evaluate front wing options while gather information on the soft compound Bridgestone Potenza tyres, with the track surface still relatively dusty. Further set-up evaluations took place in the afternoon as the track conditions improved, along with comparison runs to fully understand both the soft and super soft tyres available this weekend. That also ended without incident and the team has plenty of information to work with to maximise the potential of the TF109 in qualifying tomorrow.
Jarno Trulli: "First of all it is very nice to be back in the car after a long summer break. I am also pleased to be here in the good weather and at a nice track. Basically today was a normal Friday for us without any exceptional situations. Everything went smoothly and we had no troubles so we were able to evaluate the tyres and the set-ups to make sure we are prepared for the rest of the weekend. We still have some work to do to make the most of our car but it is difficult to see a true picture of where stand after practice as you never know exactly what programmes other teams are working on. The car feels okay but we will work to get more performance from it."
Timo Glock: "That was a pretty good day for me overall. The car feels quite positive and balanced which is a promising start to the weekend and we successfully ran through our whole programme. We planned a lot of work today but there were no technical issues and the guys all did a good job so now we have a lot of data to look at overnight. The task now is to fine-tune the car for tomorrow and the race; hopefully we can be strong. It's hard to predict what the order is at the moment because the lap times are close but we will do our best."
Dieter Gass, Chief Engineer Race and Test: "We had some new parts to test throughout the day and we collected plenty of data so we are in a position to make the right choice for tomorrow. This track is not used regularly and as a result we saw a really big circuit evolution, especially in the morning session. Due to our busy programme we had to go out early in that session to complete all our work and on the green track we damaged our tyres. That made first practice a little harder than expected but everything came back to normal in the afternoon. Even though the circuit continued to evolve, the tyres behaved a lot better than in first practice because there was more rubber on the track. We seem to be in a situation where both compounds will be workable for the race without major problems."