It was an eventful opening day of free practice for Panasonic Toyota Racing
at the US Grand Prix, with Ralf Schumacher suffering a high speed accident in
Turn 13 for the second successive year at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
The accident happened early in the second session when Schumacher’s TF105
snapped out of control and went into the concrete retaining wall after a suspected
tyre-related issue. Schumacher, who missed a number of grands prix after a similar
accident in last year’s race gave him a back injury, stepped out of the
car unhurt this time.
“The car suddenly got away from me without any warning in T13 when I
felt something go wrong on the left hand side but we still have to analyse exactly
what went wrong,” the German said. “Thankfully I am feeling okay but
we are going to have a close look at the data to see what that tells us.”
Schumacher’s incident left him with just a time from the morning session
(1m13.461s). The team’s third driver, Ricardo Zonta, meanwhile, went into
the gravel trap after another tyre-related issue just before Schumacher’s
accident and therefore lost most of the second session. His car was returned to
the pits when the session was red-flagged for Schumacher’s crash, which
allowed him to get out at the end of the session.
Zonta lapped in 1m12.085s in the morning session, just 0.058s behind Juan Pablo
Montoya’s pace-setting time for West McLaren Mercedes in that session. In
the second session, however, Montoya moved the target time up to 1m11.118s. Kimi
Raikkonen (1m11.228s) made it a McLaren one-two at the top of the time sheets.
Third quickest was Rubens Barrichello’s Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro car (1m11.746s),
ahead of team mate Michael Schumacher (1m11.758s). Nick Heidfeld was fifth fastest
(1m11.825s) with the first of the BMW Williams F1 Team cars, ahead of David Coulthard’s
Red Bull Racing entry (1m12.027s). Zonta’s morning time left him seventh
overall, while Jarno Trulli was 10th quickest with a lap in 1m12.344s.
“That was a difficult day for the whole team,” said Trulli. “Because
of the two accidents we did very little running. The car didn’t feel too
bad, but the main thing is that Ralf is okay after such a heavy impact.”
Chief Race Engineer Dieter Gass added: “Both Ralf’s and Ricardo’s
accidents came as a result of suspected issues with the left rear tyre. Now we
will spend tonight analysing the data to understand exactly what happened. But
the most important thing is that both of them are okay.”
|
