Thank you for you support over the weekend. Takahashi here with a final report from the German GP.

With our worst qualifying round to date, Jarno and Ralf qualified P9 and P12, respectively. While we can’t say we’re happy with this result, we actually aren’t too disappointed in our performance. After all, our strategy was to set up our cars with an eye toward the race, rather than emphasizing quick qualifying times. Our pattern over the last few races has been to qualify well and then lose position during the race as we fall off the pace. We approached the German GP with a strategy to reverse that trend.

Jarno hit some snags during the race, which ultimately led to trouble that caused him to retire from the race (officially scored as a 14th place finish in a complete race). On the other hand, Ralf was able to improve his position over the course of the race, finally finishing in the points at 6th. Neither of our cars were too far off the pace, and I think we’ve been able to clear up the last of our nagging engineering issues.

• Jarno had a string of bad luck, finally retiring with engine trouble
The weather report called for a 60% chance of rain on Sunday, but the clouds were late in coming, and we had a good idea that the race would be dry. In light of our testing last week, the temperatures were unexpectedly cool for a German GP, with 20°C ambient and 31°C track temperatures.

Looking back on the race, it seems like Jarno was a magnet for bad luck. Out of the start, he came into the first corner from an outside line, but was pushed further by a car on the inside. Attempting gain back lost ground, Jarno uncharacteristically went off the course at the next hairpin, creating a flat spot on his front left tire. Recent regulation changes now allow tires with flat spots to be changed out, so we had Jarno pit on the first lap to change out his tire.

After that, Jarno was driving at a really quick pace, overcoming the wide gap that had temporarily opened between him and the others—he was even able to overtake and improve his position during the middle stint. During the second half of the race, Jarno was assessed a pit drive-through penalty for ignoring a blue flag on the 53rd lap, but I don’t think he was really at fault. He was battling the car ahead of him for position when the flag came, so I don’t see what he could have done. We had signaled him from the pits that the top cars were coming up behind, but I don’t think at that particular point there was even a car close enough for him to have to move over. I guess it was a tough call that didn’t go our way. And right about that time, Jarno’s engine started to drop in pneumatic pressure as well. It looked like the engine would be able to finish the race, but the pressure dropped off precipitously after the pit drive-through. We brought Jarno back in immediately to get the pressure back up. The pressure fell off again, so we brought Jarno in for the second time. Ultimately, we decided that rather than destroying the engine, we’d have Jarno stop the car on the course. This is the fist engine trouble we’ve experienced this year, so we don’t yet know the cause. The engine itself doesn’t appear to be broken, so I don’t think we’ll have to change it out. “If only…” and “But for…” are taboo words in racing, but looking at how fast Jarno was driving, I’m sure he would have been able to pass Fisichella if everything had been performing normally.

Keizo Takahashi, having a final look-over of Jarno's car just before the start.

• Ralf’s steady in-the-points performance. Effective tire use.
Comparatively speaking, Ralf ran a very steady race. At first he was caught behind slower traffic that prevented him from going faster, but he was able to improve his position over time, and ultimately moved up enough to battle his older brother, Michael Schumacher, and Fisichella for 4th position. He was able to run about as fast as Jarno, which wasn’t bad at all. Ralf’s best lap time for the day was 1m16.073s.

In the end, I think this was a good race for us. We were able to make effective use of the tires, which had been an issue for us in the past. In France and England, the weather was cool through Saturday, and then really heated up on Sunday. When conditions change so dramatically like that, there are a lot of parameters and guesswork that have to be accounted for, and I don’t think we have done as well as we could have. The result is that we didn’t use our tires very effectively. This time, the temperature conditions didn’t change much on Sunday, which was in line with our predictions. I think we were able to make the right decisions that accurately reflected the race conditions. Unfortunately, we ran into some engine trouble, which has given us a new issue to resolve before the next race.

McLaren is fast. And although we’ve been able to catch Renault’s Fisichella, Alonso is still way out there. If we can’t catch these two teams, then we really don’t have a chance of winning. The first task is to put some space between us and the other teams in the middle of the pack. Then we have to move to a position where we can fight McLaren and Renault on an even footing. Right now, our battle is with Ferrari and BAR. As you know, we are testing our V8 engine and performing development for next year, but we still haven’t stopped conducting development for this season. We are going all out to make a quick recovery and win as soon as possible.

Thank you as always for visiting the official website of Panasonic Toyota Racing. I’ll see you back here with the next Keizo Takahashi report from Hungary next week. Until then…