Before the Turkey weekend I flagged up that I was interested in Toyota’s performance after their alarming slump in Monaco and to some extent, Spain.
Well Jarno Trulli had a great weekend, qualifying 5th and racing strongly against Nico Rosberg to finish fourth. Toyota are looking pretty good in third place in the championship, although you can see them possibly dropping one place to fourth when Ferrari get motoring in the second half of the season. What was hugely encouraging for Toyota in Istanbul, though, was that they kept the Ferraris behind them all weekend, despite the massive gains the Scuderia has made of late.
Here’s Trulli’s view, “We are back on track and it was good to be fighting at the front of the grid again. To return to the top five immediately after what happened in Monaco is great and it is a credit to the team, who have worked really hard to improve our performance. We were not far away from the fastest car; there is still a small gap which we will work to close but we are moving in the right direction.
“Basically it has been achieved through a lot of hard work after Monaco, by everyone in the team. Monaco is a one-off race and we felt sure our problems would not be repeated in Turkey but we didn’t leave this to chance. We had a few upgrades, with changes to the front and rear wings, which brought additional performance. Overall we improved in many areas, including the start which was fantastic for me on Sunday. Timo and I have worked together with the team to understand where we can improve and the result we had in Turkey was a nice reward for our effort. ”
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Great to see Toyota back on form. Trulli and Rosberg had an interesting duel this weekend and Glock’s one stop strategy was executed brilliantly. Although, he have finished 9th or 10th had Nakajima not had his problem. I hope they win their first race this season. If its going to happen, then they need to repeat the Bahrain front grid lock-out and have a better strategy.
James: i just came from istambul, and the feeling i got from watching the cars, was that they are slow. I didn’t get a feeling of speed, mostly up the hills.
To tell you the truth, only at the exit of turn 8, and down the next strait, i really got a taste of what a f1 should be like.
I was in jarama, for the martini legends, and the few laps that gene did, (2007 ferrari, with sliks), the feeling was completly diferent. A real f1 machine.
May be, it is just a pesonal feeling, because nobody is talking about it.
What do you think?
Jose,
It’s very difficult to compare cars running round Turkey with its super wide straights to Jarama which is a much more claustrophobic circuit.
Turkey allows the cars to open up a lot more, but it has the downside that the appearance of speed is a lot less.
At the risk of sounding negative, when people like Trulli and John Howet say that they improved “through a lot of hard work,” I have to say big freakin’ deal! Who doesn’t work hard? In this economy we all have to work hard to stay employed.
What serious racing fans want is more specific information. I understand that they have to keep their secrets in a competitive environment like F1, but please give us more than hard work and generic wing changes. There has to be a happy medium between meaningless words and revealing technological secrets. F1 is becoming boring in more ways than one…
An interesting article right about now would be a comparison of other motor sport series (and maybe even other sports like the Premier League), their budget levels to participate and how much ‘3rd parties’ not directly related to the show take out of the sport (aka CVC).
Take for example Kaka signing for 65 million Euros (more than the suggested budget cap figure for 1 team next year) and the recent signing of Ronaldo for 80 millions pounds.
Maybe Mosley should switch to Football !
Got one lined up, actually..
Rumour has it that Toyota went back to a previous Aero Package to improve things – can anyone verify this ?
James, I was always surprised by your take on Ferrari’s showing at Monaco, and now even more so. Have they gone backwards as Toyota have gone forwards, or is it all down to different tracks ?
Different tracks of course play a key part for quite a few of these teams this year. I was looking at Toyota and Ferrari over Spain and Monaco, not just Monaco, but it shows how teams can make a big step this season, which keeps things interesting. Only really Brawn and to some extent Red Bull seem to always be able to stay ahead.