Hello, everyone. As always, thank you for visiting the official Panasonic Toyota Racing website. Keizo Takahashi here with a report on Friday and Saturday from the Grand Prix of Europe. The format is a little different with this GP, as qualifying is completed with only a single session on Saturday.

• Approaching our “home-town” GP with a fresh attitude
Before I go on, I want to mention a few things about the previous GP in Monaco. While we certainly showed potential, I think we ran into bad luck. Or maybe I should say that our results were a combination of good luck and bad luck. Still, I suppose there’s no sense in blaming our performance on bad luck. Jarno knew the risks he was taking when he made his overtake move. On that particular day, the risk outweighed the actual benefit. On the other hand, while Ralf was hounded by bad luck, he scratched and clawed his way into the points. Up until Monaco, it seemed that Jarno got all the breaks, but now things might be looking up for Ralf. I have great expectations for these two drivers to be racing each other tenaciously for a top finish. There are going to be a lot of Panasonic Toyota Racing fans at the circuit.

Nurburgring is about one hour from the TMG Cologne headquarters by car. The circuit is extremely convenient to Hockenheim and Spa-Francorchamps, and the GP is one of only a few grand prix races in the area. The 600 TMG employees drew for tickets, with 200 each going to the race on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. This is a circuit for which our car is particularly suited, and we want everyone to come and see how far we have come this year.

• First engine update of the season
We have made two major changes for this GP. The first is in our aerodynamics, which we intend to update for every GP. For Nurburgring, we have made changes to the front wing, the rear wing, and the area around the front suspension.

We have also made changes to the engine, looking to generate more power. We believe we have engine reliability dialed in, so we have been focusing on increasing power by a factor. This race marks of first step in our quest. Jarno’s car has been given the new spec engine, but since we had to change out Ralf’s engine last race, we’ll have to make what changes we can under the regulations to hopefully push Ralf’s engine closer to Jarno’s spec. We can’t make any internal changes to the engine, but we can do some external modifications to the air intake and fuel systems.

If I was forced to characterize the Nurburgring course, I would have to say that it is “technical.” The circuit doesn’t have an extreme number of stop-and-go sections, but neither does it have a great number of corners. The fuel effect might slightly greater than average, and the time required to pit-in seems to be about average. The course doesn’t really require hard braking, but you can’t say that it’s easy on the brakes, either. You can’t emphasize traction in the setup, but you also can’t emphasize cornering. I guess you would say that balancing all of these trade-offs is the key factor for car setup.

Modifications to the front and rear wings have been made for the GP of Europe. The rear wing end plate now has four slits.

• Heavy traffic and yellow flags; but not a bad day, all in all
The Nurburgring circuit is characteristically very dusty on Friday mornings. Given the poor grip, we had only Ricardo go out at first, with both drivers running the last half of the session. All three of our drivers had the same comment about the circuit: no grip. In the afternoon, the rubber grip had built up on the track, and surface temperature was rising. Unfortunately, even as track conditions improved, heavy traffic and yellow flags held us back, so we weren’t able to get any truly clear laps. Looking at our best results, I really wondered if the times reflected our actual performance.

With Ricardo driving a good number of laps in the morning, we were able to dial in his setup somewhat. He conducted long runs in the afternoon, and with a final performance check, we were able to finish our program without any undue problems. Today, our most important task was to gather tire data, and with Ricardo doing such a good job for us, over the course of the day, we were able to collect more than enough data.

Our regular drivers made their long runs during afternoon practice, but the yellow flag came out almost as soon as Jarno had changed tires and taken the course, so we weren’t able to accomplish much during his time. The flag stayed out for about three laps, so we were forced to make a correction for his times in order to make any decisions at all. Ralf had some balance issues, but was still able to finish his program, even with all of the traffic and yellow flags.

Ricardo’s sector and long run times were every bit as fast as Wurz’ from McLaren (the fastest practice time for the day), and I think we made a good start for a Friday performance.

• The goal is to keep our favorable position, and reach the podium in front of the TMG employees.
For Saturday morning practice, we changed our setup to favor overall grip. Grip had improved quite a bit compared to Friday, and the car was behaving less nervously than it had. Ralf still complained of poor grip; however, even though there wasn’t a significant difference in times.

Due to the change in qualifying system for this GP, the race strategy for the first stint has be determined between the finish of practice at 11 a.m. and beginning of qualifying at 1 p.m. With a slightly elevating afternoon track temperature, and a strengthening headwind, it seemed that conditions were beginning to deteriorate compared to the morning’s practice.

I thought tire selection would be the easiest part of our decisions, but there was a disagreement between the team’s opinion and the drivers’ preferences. The regular drivers weren’t able to evaluate both types of tires under the same conditions, and the impressions of tire performance were different between the drivers and the team. But considering the data Ricardo collected on Friday and the reports from Michelin, we arrived at a decision that contradicted that of the drivers. We explained our decision to the drivers, and they ultimately accepted our decision.

Having dealt with these issues, Jarno was the first to make his attack run. Owing to a near perfect performance on his part, we were almost exactly on our expected time. This was the first time that Ralf made an attack run after Jarno. According to Jarno’s information, balance hadn’t changed significantly, so we didn’t make any adjustments to Ralf’s car going out. Unfortunately, Ralf encountered a strong understeer in Sector 1, causing him to slide and lose time.

I had hoped that we would be able to have two of the top six cars. I think Jarno is in the best position right now. If we can overtake at least one car ahead of us on the grid at the start, then I think we’ll be in for a good race. I really want to get a podium finish in front of the TMG employees coming from Cologne. I know the drivers feel the same way.

I’ll be here at the official Panasonic Toyota Racing website with another Takahashi DTC Report after the race. Until then…