Paul Ricard Day 3 – Toyota 5th and 6th fastest


By Nick Sparkes
March 23 2006

Toyota’s Jarno Trulli took over testing duties from Ralf Schumacher, whilst Birthday boy Ricardo Zonta continued in the second Toyota. Although for the second day running both Toyota’s would finish fifth and sixth (bottom of the time sheets), they were only 1.3 seconds off the fastest time.

Once again Heikki Kovalainen for Renault was fastest, clocking up a massive 213 laps! Nick Heidfeld was second for BMW-Sauber, half a second behind the flying Renault driver.

Third and fourth were the two McLaren’s of Pedro de la Rosa and Gary Paffett, who between them covered just under 300 laps.

Just like yesterday, Toyota were at the bottom of the pile. Jarno Trulli fifth, whilst Ricardo Zonta, who incidentally was celebrating his 30th Birthday today, finished sixth and last. But, there were positives. Toyota seemed much closer to the pack, a mere 1.3 seconds behind the charging Renault of Kovalainen, and there was evidence that Toyota were seeking the problem which has embarrassed them for much of the 2006 season.

Jarno knows there’s a lot of work to be done if we are to catch up with the front running teams. "We worked on more tyre and set-up testing to evaluate tyres for Australia because so far we have just found out that we have to go softer on our car in order to make the car work. At any rate we are looking at many options to understand how the car is behaving. One step is to work with a softer compound, which we were using this afternoon. Overall, we are mainly pushing hard this week to be competitive at the next races and I am sure we will have some interesting data to take with us to Australia."

Whilst Ricardo was quite confident with his days work. "Today was quite good, and everything worked well. The wind in the morning was upsetting the car in the fast corners but the track was cleaner and hotter than yesterday, so this was better for us. We found some positive results with the warming up and consistency of the tyres on my car and this is definitely good for the future. In addition, everything was reliable on the car. We did 121 laps without any problems and this was also an encouraging factor."

1 H. Kovalainen Renault Michelin 01:04.400 213
2 N. Heidfeld BMW Michelin 01:04.903 96
3 P. de la Rosa McLaren Michelin 01:05.094 145
4 G. Paffett McLaren Michelin 01:05.518 153
5 J. Trulli Toyota Bridgestone 01:05.702 72
6 R. Zonta Toyota Bridgestone 01:05.738 121