After a generally disappointing weekend, Toyota has declared it’s intent to return towards the front of the field in Hungary.
Jarno Trulli’s race was spoiled from the onset, after a coming together with another car forced the Italian to change his front wing. He would finish in a lowly 17th place.
His team mate, Timo Glock, put in a battling driving infront of his home fans to come from starting in the pitlane up through the field. However, Glock could not get past the Mclaren of Heikki Kovalainen in the final stint of the race and had to settle for 9th – out of the points.
Jarno Trulli – 17th: “The race was over for me at the first corner. There were several cars fighting for position but I suddenly saw another car go past me and jump over my front wing because there was no space. I couldn’t see that part of my wing but I could feel there was something wrong so I came in and the team changed it. After that the car felt good but unfortunately as soon as I caught up with the field I was always stuck in traffic and couldn’t do anything. When I had a clear track ahead of me later in the race I put in some quick laps and was second fastest overall but it was too late.”
Timo Glock – 9th: “In general I am reasonably satisfied with my performance today because I started from the pit lane and finished ninth on a track where overtaking is very difficult. We had a good strategy after what happened in qualifying yesterday but unfortunately I had some traffic in the first stint which cost me time. I only had around four laps without traffic all day but when I had a clear track I was quick. If it wasn’t for the traffic I would have had a better chance at scoring points. On the last stint I was quicker than (Heikki) Kovalainen but I just couldn’t get past. I pushed really hard and tried to overtake twice but I couldn’t manage. But we need to qualify higher so we can fight at the front in the race and we will work on this for the next Grand Prix.”
Tadashi Yamashina – Team Principal: “Unfortunately we couldn’t make the most of the race today, despite having the potential in the car to get a much better result. The race was decided for us in qualifying; starting from where we did made it extremely difficult to finish in the points even though the car had quite good performance, as you can see from Jarno’s second-fastest race lap. Now we have to work towards the Hungarian Grand Prix, where we will fight to achieve a significantly better result. The Hungaroring is a track which could suit our cars, and we have a good record there historically, so we will do our very best to get back among the leading teams.”