Bahrain Grand Prix - Free Practice Round-Up
Friday 24 April 2009
Jarno Trulli (Car 9, Chassis TF109-06)
1st Practice: 15th, 1m 35.036s (+1.389s), 22 laps
2nd Practice: 3rd, 1m 33.616s (+0.277s), 37 laps
Timo Glock (Car 10, Chassis TF109-05)
1st Practice: 17th, 1m 35.333s (+1.686s), 20 laps
2nd Practice: 8th, 1m 33.764s (+0.425s), 37 laps
Panasonic Toyota Racing began preparations for the Bahrain Grand Prix
with two full practice sessions today. After the wild weather of the
early races of 2009, it was sunny at the Bahrain International
Circuit, with air temperatures ranging 32-37C and track from
43-57C. Toyota's Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock had busy days
collecting data for Saturday and Sunday. Both drivers used only the
medium Bridgestone tyre compound in the morning but they sampled both
that and the super soft in the afternoon. The team will now analyse
the information to finalise set-up for qualifying and the race.
Jarno Trulli
"We collected a lot of data here during our winter tests at this
circuit but the conditions today were very different. So we had to
change some of our set-up in order to suit the car to these
temperatures, which are much hotter. There is also quite a lot more
sliding around than we had in the winter but I guess that's the same
for everyone. We spent the day going through our usual programme of
tyre testing and set-up work. We still need to find a bit more
driveability in the car but it's not a bad start to the weekend."
Timo Glock
"During our winter tests at this circuit we had a good, consistent
pace but so far today I've found the car quite hard to drive. The lap
times aren't bad but I've been struggling for balance. So we'll have
to work overnight to sort out our direction for tomorrow and to get
the car back to where it should be. If we can do that then I'm sure we
can keep up our strong start to the year."
Dieter Gass, Chief Engineer Race and Test
"Today was a very good day for us overall. Even though we mainly had
fine conditions during winter testing here, there is still a
significant difference in temperature. So we had to reassess some of
the items we had already tried. We have some updates in aerodynamics
and brake cooling here and we ran through our programme without
issues. The tyre behaviour certainly seems less critical than in the
last few races. So this is a very good baseline for another strong
showing on Sunday."
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