•Our New Front Wing--Without a Moment to Spare!
Right now we are at the Kuala Lumpur Circuit in Malaysia, the site of the second F1 race of the season. Although Malaysia is close to Japan, it's a long way from our home base in Europe (Cologne, Germany). The jet lag makes for a tough schedule. After we finished in Australia, we made the nearly 24-hour trip home to Cologne, and then had to get back on the plane just a week later for the ten-plus hour trip to Malaysia. We're not only dealing with jet lag, but also 30

In spite of the tough schedule, we were able to update the aerodynamics of our machines. We changed the front wing and its surrounding area. This new profile is designed to increase our downforce. We didn't have any time for testing, so we were heading into the race somewhat "unrehearsed," but we were very confident in our design. The only other change we made was a slight modification to the cooling system to deal with the Malaysian heat. We only had enough time to fashion three new front wings, so Trulli's car and Ralf's car each got one, and one was held for backup. Zonta's T car used the older wing.

This will be the second race on our engines (under the new rules). Jarno ran the most distance at the Australian GP, a total of 670km. We actually planned to run more, but it was raining Saturday at the Australia GP. This will be the first time that either car has gone past 1,000km, and we're excited to see what happens. We are very confident in the reliability of our engine design.

•What Cause the Tire Troubles in Australia?
Thanks in part to the weather, we were able to finish in second position during qualifying at the Australian GP. Unfortunately, we ran into some unexpected troubles during the finals, and finished out of the points completely. We thought our tires caused our problems, and we took them completely apart after the race to see if we could detect where the trouble was--but we couldn't find anything wrong. We knew from our data that we had lost sideways G-force, and the only reasons we could think of were either that we ran through some oil on the track, or we picked up someone else's tire debris. That's our theory, anyway, since everything returned to normal toward the end of the race. Jarno tells us that he felt some serious vibration while he was driving, so we know for a fact that something was wrong. Up to the point we ran into trouble, Jarno was right on Fisichella's tail, so of course we were very disappointed with the outcome. We also think that we had a bit too much downforce designed into our setup for the conditions. Our data showed that our top speed wasn't as fast as we thought we could get. The track on Sunday in Australia was actually very good, so we know our setup wasn't ideal.

With Malaysia being so much hotter than Australia, the Malaysian GP is always unforgiving on both driver and machine. The key points for this race will most likely be 1.) tires and 2.) engine. The track surface will reach up to 55°C, which means tires can easily blister. Many teams in Australia selected soft tires for their setup, and with the good track on Sunday, those tires made it through without any significant problems. In Malaysia, it can be a completely different. In Australia, we were worried about the possibility of blistering, so we chose hard tires then. Malaysia will also be the first time for F1 that a single engine has been run in a second race, so reliability is a big factor here. I've made a point to look at the other teams' cars this week, and I can see that they have all made some changes since Australia. I felt a renewed sense that we at Panasonic Toyota Racing must always be working?looking to find that edge that pushes us ahead.

In the afternoon, we ran both of our regular cars. Zonta did a long-run test on the tires. We were able to finish all of our planned testing, and came back with a lot of good data. It looked like we weren't going to have to worry too much over tire selection, either. The track surface was up to between 52°C and 53°C, but neither our optional or prime tires showed any signs of blistering. There were some differences in pressure, however. Another of our worries?the cooling system?had no problems either. The computer temperature was a little hot, but we had that fixed by the afternoon.

Saturday morning was overcast, which helped make for low track temperatures, and great overall conditions. We didn't run during the first session, opting to check the top speeds of the other cars. Having seen how they ran, we decided that we needed to reduce downforce a bit on our setup. It looked like we made the right choice, and our cars showed good balance, too.

The track temperature had risen a good 10°C by the afternoon qualifying, and we paid close attention to how the earlier cars were running. We didn't notice much difference in the balance of the earlier racers, so we decided to leave the settings as we had them during the morning for Ralf, our first driver in qualifying. Ralf unexpectedly ran into an under steering problem right off in the first corner of the attack lap, losing precious time. This was really frustrating, since Ralf ran extremely fast through sectors T2 and T3.

We raised the front wing slightly for Jarno's car, which really did the trick. As a result, Jarno finished second and Ralf finished fifth in qualifying. We were really happy that both cars were able to achieve these results during the first qualifying attack with the qualifying specifications we used. We need to do some more thinking about tomorrow's setup for qualifying and for the final, but we think we're in a position to win the pole.

Tire wear seemed to be fine during our long-run tests, and we think they won't cause any issues during the race. Our only major concern right now is the weather. Given the weather reports, it's no stretch to anticipate overcast skies and rain every day after about 3 p.m. The final is after 3 p.m., so there's a good chance we'll be driving in the rain. The weather made it tough for some teams in Australia. It would be nice to be able to race dry for all three days?I'd like to see how we really stack up against the other teams.

That's all for today. I'll file another report after the final tomorrow. See you here.