Friday: Without issue, Toyota is still far from the target

A Friday that the Toyota team claims as positive even if the results are not up to par. Everyone asserts that the car is balanced and everything is fine, but neither of the two drivers managed to do better than a 12th place, with admittedly an improvement in the afternoon.

Jarno Trulli fares best with the 18th and 12th fastest times, while Timo Glock struggles a bit more with the 19th and 15th fastest times. On the tire front, no particular problems.

Jarno Trulli – 18th and 12th:

« First of all, it is very pleasant to be back in the car after a long summer break. I am also happy to be here in good weather conditions and on a beautiful track. Basically, today was a normal Friday for us, without any exceptional situations. Everything went well and we didn’t have any issues. We were able to evaluate the tires and the setup to ensure we are ready for the rest of the weekend. »

« We still have work to do to get the best out of our car, but it is difficult to have an accurate picture of where we stand after tests which consistently cause variability at the level of each team’s programs. The car behaves well, but we will work to achieve better performance. »

Timo Glock – 19th and 15th:

« It’s a very good day for me in general. The car is well balanced, which is a promising start for the weekend. We followed our program. We had a lot of work planned today, but there were no technical problems and all the guys did a good job. Now, we have a lot of data to review for tomorrow. The task now is to fine-tune the car for tomorrow and Sunday’s race. It’s hard to predict the order at the moment because lap times are close, but we will do our best. »

Dieter Gass – Chief Race and Test Engineer:

« We had some new parts to test throughout the day and gathered a lot of data to make the right choice for tomorrow. This track is not regularly used and as a result, we saw a constantly evolving circuit. Due to our busy schedule, we had to go out at the beginning of this session to complete all our work and on a still green track, we damaged our tires. It was a bit more challenging than expected, but everything returned to normal in the afternoon. Even though the track continued to evolve, the tires performed much better than in the first session because there was more rubber on the track. We seem to be in a situation where both compounds will be viable for the race and without major problems. »