Panasonic Toyota Racing finished the British Grand Prix at
Silverstone with just 11th place from Jarno Trulli to show for the
weekend’s efforts.

Ralf Schumacher, who qualified in a strong seventh place, was out of the race on the opening lap after an incident in the middle of the fast and difficult Becketts section of the track. Ralf’s Toyota TF106B was clipped by Scott Speed’s Toro Rosso and, despite his best efforts, Schumacher could not control the car. He came back across the circuit where he collided with Mark Webber’s Williams, putting both cars out of the race.

“There is nothing you can do when that happens,” Schumacher said. “It is very frustrating and I believed that after qualifying we would be well placed to score more points. But I did not get a good start, for the second successive race, and that’s when you end up in the middle of the pack and in trouble. But nobody does anything like that on purpose and you just have to put it behind you and look forward.”

Trulli’s race, meanwhile, was compromised by an engine failure in qualifying that relegated him to the back of the grid.

“Before that happened I had been optimistic,” Jarno explained. “The car’s balance was good and we had performed well in testing on the higher-speed circuits, like Barcelona and Silverstone. But it’s difficult to pass here because if you run close to the car in front you lose downforce. I made up some places at the first pit stop with the extra new tyres that I did not use in qualifying and we hoped to do the same to pass Barrichello at the second stop but, unfortunately, I came out behind David Coulthard. I did everything I could but it was not really realistic for us to score points here from the back of the grid.”

World champion Fernando Alonso scored his third consecutive victory for Mild Seven Renault, opening up his margin over Michael Schumacher to 23 points in the chase for the ’06 title. Schumacher was second for Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro, ahead of Team McLaren Mercedes driver Kimi Raikkonen. Giancarlo Fisichella finished fourth in the second Renault, ahead of Ferrari driver Felipe Massa and Juan Pablo Montoya with the second McLaren. The BMW Saubers of Nick Heidfeld and Jacques Villeneuve claimed the final points.

Toyota’s Pascal Vasselon said: “Ralf’s poor start was a bit of a mystery because we have been working hard on that recently. As a consequence he found himself mixed up in first-lap traffic and there was nothing he could do when he was tipped into a spin. Jarno’s race was obviously shaped by his qualifying problems and he kept pushing and achieved everything that was possible.”

The team now heads to Monza for more testing before the F1 World Championship heads across the Atlantic for the mid-season flyaway races in Montreal and Indianapolis.