23/07/2004

Grand Prix of Germany Free Practice Report

The new 'B' specification version of the Toyota TF104 had a promising debut at Hockenheim today although the true potential of the car cannot be judged until tomorrow's practice and qualifying sessions for the German Grand Prix round 12 of this year's Formula 1 World Championship.

In the first session of free practice Olivier Panis set the sixth fastest time with a lap in 1m16.484s. Of the five times ahead of him two were test drivers and two were Bridgestone runners so the only possible comparison was to be made with Kimi Raikkonen who lapped in 1m16.318s with the updated West McLaren Mercedes chassis that he drove to second place at Silverstone a fortnight ago. Judging form based around Friday times is notoriously unreliable however as fuel levels and tyre compounds are unclear throughout the field.

"It was a tough day Panis explained. It is the first time that we had run the new car in its full configuration and so we had a lot of data collection to get through. It is hard to fit all the work into the two hours that we had available."

Team mate Cristiano da Matta added: "This is the first time that we have been able to work with the new aero package on a circuit because the parts are so new that we haven't even had a proper opportunity to test them. That being the case we elected to work on the balance in the second session and we will have to see where we are tomorrow."

Test driver Ricardo Zonta meanwhile concentrated on tyre comparison work with the older version of the TF104. If anyone was confused about the benefits of that on a car that won't be raced Zonta explained: "The levels of tyre degradation are going to be pretty much the same so it's still a valid medium for doing tyre work. The only difference is that the new car should be able to extract more performance from a new set of tyres."

Michael Schumacher set the fastest time of the day (1m15.001s) in the second session for Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro which was just 0.04s quicker than Raikkonen's best for West McLaren Mercedes. Third fastest was last year's Hockenheim winner Juan Pablo Montoya (1m15.167s) in the first of the BMW Williams F1 Team cars followed by Jenson Button's Lucky Strike BAR Honda (1m15.379s). Williams test driver Antonio Pizzonia who is standing in for the injured Ralf Schumacher at the German's home Grand Prix was fifth fastest in 1m15.470s 0.1s up on BAR test driver Anthony Davidson.

By comparison Ricardo Zonta was 10th (1m16.200s) with the normal TF104 chassis while both Da Matta (1m17.300s) and Panis (1m17.419s) were slower than their morning times as they concentrated on long runs on old tyres.

Technical Director Chassis Mike Gascoyne said in summary: "We shouldn't read too much into time differences between the cars. We used the second session as a test session to improve the balance of the 'B'-spec cars and to work with the new aero package. Overall we just concentrated on making sure we are in as good a shape as possible for tomorrow. That's when we'll really see how competitive the updated car will be."