28/05/2004

Grand Prix of Europe - Free Practice Report

Panasonic Toyota Racing has started the Nurburgring weekend in a positive manner with drivers Olivier Panis (1m31.910s) Cristiano da Matta (1m30.531s) and Ricardo Zonta (1m30.949s) all achieving promising midfield times in the first session of free practice.

Compared with other venues Nurburgring with its location in Germany's Eifel mountains has ambient temperatures that can be relatively low especially early in the day. That can bring even bigger change in chassis performance between say an early Saturday morning session and race conditions by 2pm Sunday.

"The variation can make it even more difficult to choose the tyres Zonta explained, I focused more on the longer runs than on qualifying performance. I managed to do some good assessment of the performance and the degradation and in the end I think we have found a good balance for the race."

Panis meanwhile was satisfied with his and the team's on track performance but not with the behaviour of some of his fellow drivers.

"We had some small problems early in the day but the team responded well he reported. I was doing a very quick lap later on when I came across Bas Leinders in the Minardi doing some very strange things... I know that sometimes cars can be hard to drive but people really do need to look in their mirrors!"

For Da Matta Friday practice was also positive: "The balance is good but we do need to find a little more grip. If I have one slight concern though it is the relatively high levels of tyre degradation."

West McLaren Mercedes driver Kimi Raikkonen last year's Nurburgring pole-winner set the fastest lap of the day (1m29.355s) marginally quicker than BAR Honda third driver Anthony Davidson (1m29.447s). Michael Schumacher was third fastest for Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro (1m29.631s) ahead of Ralf Schumacher's BMW Williams F1 Team entry (1m29.671s) David Coulthard (1m29.700s) in the second McLaren and Rubens Barrichello (1m29.865s) in the other Ferrari.

Technical Director Engine Luca Marmorini said: "The main task has been to try to overcome a general lack of grip as well as looking at the degradation that the drivers have mentioned. But on the engine side there have been no worries at all."

With the Nurburgring track around 500m above sea level there is something approaching a 5% power loss which means that the track is not one of the more stressful on F1's power units.