Sakhir - Toyota - Test day 5Toyota Racing stepped up its preparations for the 2008 season with a Grand Prix simulation today in testing at Bahrain.
Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock were given the task of driving during a simulation which included practice, qualifying, and a
race distance, including fuel and tyre pit stops.
The morning's work consisted of practice before a simulated qualifying session while at 1:30pm sharp, the race procedure began with Trulli and Glock proceeding to the grid to begin the test.
The TF108s once again showed strong reliability while the pit crew performed flawlessly despite almost four months going by since the last race of the 2007 season. The information gathered during this simulation will help the team optimise the TF108 package before the start of the season.
In the wake of the two Ferrari cars also present on track,
Jarno Trulli was third-fastest of the day with a time of 1:30.944, ahead of Timo Glock’s 1:31.213. The Italian completed 91 laps, the German counted 93.
It was therefore a very busy session for the Toyota team today with overall satisfaction as the reward. Both drivers will return their focus to set-up comparisons for the final day of testing in Bahrain tomorrow.
Jarno Trulli:
"It was a good day. We did a lot of laps and successfully simulated a race distance without any trouble.
We did some set-up work this morning and the lap times show we are moving forward. We still have work to do but we are definitely going in the right direction and that is very positive. I was pretty happy with the car today, even during the long runs. Obviously there is still room for improvement so we will study the data and push hard to improve our car."
Timo Glock:
"In the morning I did a qualifying run in a Formula 1 car for the first time in a few years, in our Q1 simulation, and that went really well. The Q3 simulation, with a bit more fuel on board, also went well and I had good speed, but when we got to the race simulation I didn't have the ideal set-up. It wasn't quite what I wanted because the first few laps were good but then the handling dropped off a bit. However, it was a good experience for me and it will help us understand which direction to go in when it comes to setting up the car for a race distance. It was also useful to get experience of driving a full Grand Prix distance because I have not done that since 2004, although I am fit so it was no problem for me."
Dieter Gass, Chief Engineer Race and Test:
"It was encouraging to see the TF108 is a big improvement over the TF107 if you compare the times today with last year's race. We ran different settings during the simulation and it was positive to see how consistent the cars were during the race, especially Jarno's car. We learn about different aspects of the car's behaviour during a race simulation and we are able to compare things between the two cars so we have gained a lot of useful information. Again it was very good to see the TF108 running reliably, which it has done all year so far, and the pit crew did a good job with the four stops we made during the race."
Source Toyota
