07/05/2004

Grand Prix of Spain - Free Practice Report

Panasonic Toyota Racing has had a strong first day at Circuit de Catalunya in Spain scene of round 5 of the 2004 Formula 1 World Championship.

Toyotas F1 cars have always performed relatively well at Barcelona a high-speed circuit and the team is hopeful that it can score its first points of the season in the Spanish GP.

The team's third driver Ricardo Zonta (1m16.360s) finished the day with the fifth quickest time overall while race drivers Cristiano da Matta (1m16.833s) and Olivier Panis (1m16.925s) were 10th and 11th respectively. Zonta actually posted the third fastest lap in the second free practice session setting the fastest first sector time before traffic slowed him up.

Zonta said: "We worked hard in the morning session on the tyre comparison and something that we found in testing at Mugello resulted in improved performance which was positive. In the second practice we concentrated on longer runs and I think we ended up with a lot of good data."

The Barcelona circuit imposes high loadings on the rear tyres in particular and car set-up while always important is especially critical here.

"I think we are heading in a good direction although I had traffic on my quickest lap Panis said. Da Matta added: Changing track conditions always makes it difficult to properly evaluate set-up and today the surface was quite dusty and there was quite a bit of wind. But having said that I think we can be satisfied with the programme we did today even if there is more still to come."

Panasonic Toyota Racing's Technical Director Chassis Mike Gascoyne explained: "The tyre choice could be very interesting here and we are going to have to analyse everything very carefully. Ricardo did a lot of the evaluation work and we got through our programme with all three drivers. Encouragingly they were happy with the balance which is especially important in not overloading the tyres and maintaining a decent race pace at Barcelona. Overall we had a competitive day."

Michael Schumacher's Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro entry set the fastest time of the day (1m15.658s) with Jenson Button's Lucky Strike BAR Honda second quickest (1m15.935s). Their respective team mates Rubens Barrichello (1m16.033s) and BAR test driver Anthony Davidson (1m16.188s) were third and fourth ahead of Zonta and then Ralf Schumacher (1m16.433s) in the quicker of the two BMW Williams F1 Team cars.