Australian GP - Toyota - RaceToyota had hoped to score strongly in the season opening Australian Grand Prix after Janro Trulli and Timo Glock qualified sixth and ninth yesterday.
A ten position penalty for Glock put him on the back foot but the German ran well on
a one stop strategy until running wide at turn 12 on lap 44 and crashing heavily.
Jarno Trulli ran as high as fifth before a leaking battery forced his retirement.
Timo Glock
"That was a hard way to return to racing in F1. Given our starting position this was always going to be a difficult afternoon's work. I had contact with two other cars at the start but despite our heavy fuel load we were able to make up some ground in the early part of the race. Still, the car felt a bit strange in terms of understeer and that's what we have to work on to improve the car. After the pit stop it was hard work to drive and my race ended with the crash. I feel fine but I'm disappointed and we will hope for better fortunes next week."
Jarno Trulli"From early on in the race the battery was too hot. Then when I stopped in the pits it just gave up. That is a pity because the car felt good and I was doing pretty well. I was running comfortably in the points so it is unfortunate to lose out on a scoring start to the year.
Still, the car is better than last year's and there is performance to come. Here we didn't look too strong because we didn't work the tyres perfectly but even so we could have had a good result. So I'm sure we can fight well this year and I hope to be stronger in Malaysia."
Tadashi Yamashina, Team Principal
"This was a tough afternoon for every team because it was the first race and there were such high temperatures. But under these conditions Toyota must show our teamwork and I'm so disappointed that Jarno performed so well but he suffered a reliability issue with his battery. We must analyse the fault to make sure it doesn't happen again. Timo will have gained a lot of experience from his first race. Fortunately he's fine and I'm very glad about that. We will now do our best to improve at the next race."
Toyota
