Gearbox and engine problems for Trulli

Panasonic Toyota Racing completed its penultimate day of testing at the Bahrain International Circuit today with Ralf Schumacher back in action alongside Jarno Trulli. Ralf recovered from his sore back following a rest yesterday afternoon and he returned to join Jarno in trying out different set-ups and gathering information from the new aerodynamic package.

Several red flags early in the morning limited running and Jarno’s progress was disrupted further when a gearbox issue caused him to spin, bringing out the red flags. Throttle control and gearbox trouble cost Jarno further time in the afternoon but Ralf was able to make good progress and completed well over a race distance before clutch repairs ended his session an hour early. Ralf will resume his programme tomorrow for the final day of the test, with Franck Montagny replacing Jarno.

Ralf Schumacher - Chassis TF107/03
Best Lap Time: 1min 33.054s
Position: 13th
Total laps: 84
Total distance: 454.6kms
“Today we did a lot of running and that was positive. We had a few different things in our programme we wanted to go through and we managed to do that. It was particularly good to get a lot of laps in today because of what happened yesterday, when I didn’t test in the afternoon. My back is fine and I was able to do more than a normal Grand Prix distance without any real trouble. Now I hope to end our test here with a positive day tomorrow.”

Jarno Trulli - Chassis TF107/01
Best Lap Time: 1min 33.384s
Position: 16th
Total laps: 41
Total distance: 221.8kms
“Today was the hardest day of the test for me. I had gearbox issues and an engine problem so I could not do much proper running. We have one more test before the start of the season so hopefully we can make improvements. There are some issues that we need to fix but obviously that is what testing is for and I remain confident.”

Pascal Vasselon, Senior General Manager Chassis “Jarno went through quite a lot of problems and we are not really happy with the reliability record on his car today. Still, despite this lack of running, his programme has been very fruitful. It has been useful in terms of results and they have been interesting. Ralf had much better conditions but at the end of the session he had an issue with the clutch which forced him to stop early. Overall he had a good day which went smoothly and brought us some very interesting results.”