SPLASH AND DASH

Panasonic Toyota Racing switched its focus to preparations for the Canadian Grand Prix, which takes place on 8 June, for the final day of testing at Paul Ricard in the south of France. After the team spent the opening two days fine–tuning Monaco set–ups, the circuit configuration was changed to the 1E lay–out to simulate the heavy braking demands of the long straights, chicanes and hairpins of Montreal. The TF108 ran smoothly with Jarno Trulli in the cockpit but heavy rain, which arrived just after the morning installation laps, severely limited running. Jarno tried both the wet and extreme wet Bridgestone Potenza tyres before torrential rain around lunchtime soaked the track and rendered further performance testing impossible, leaving him on top of the timing sheets. The next action for the team comes at the Monaco Grand Prix, with practice beginning next Thursday.

Jarno Trulli – Chassis TF108-04
Best Lap Time: 1min 31.360s
Position: 1st
Total laps: 26

“With the first two days of this week’s test devoted to Monaco preparations we had scheduled an intensive programme today because Montreal is a very different type of circuit and we wanted to try out different aerodynamic and mechanical solutions. You run less downforce in Montreal compared to Monaco so the car set–up is very different and we had planned a lot of work on this. It was frustrating that the rain came early in the day and meant that we could not collect any dry data.”

Gerd Pfeiffer – Test Team Manager

“We were planning a full day concentrating on Montreal–specific aerodynamic and mechanical set–ups but unfortunately the weather spoiled that. We initially fitted wet tyres to do a baseline run in the highest downforce specification we would run in Canada but the rain got worse. The next time we went out, just before lunch, we ran the extreme wets but Jarno reported too much surface water. Then, in the small time we got at the very end of the day, we ran a couple of systems checks. It was a frustrating end to the test but at least we collected a lot of data to prepare for Monaco over the first two days.”