Toyota technical chief Pascal Vasselon believes that his team s lack of performance in the last few races is down to their lack of qualifying pace.
Toyota started the 2009 F1 season strongly and many tipped them to be championship contenders, however as the season has progressed, Toyota have started to slip further down the field. The team scored just six points from the last four races and are now fifth in the team standings.
Both drivers have struggled in qualifying and it s been four races since Toyota were seen in the final qualifying session. However their race pace appears entirely different to the qualifying efforts with Timo Glock putting in the quickest lap of the race at last weekend s European Grand Prix, proving that the car does have good race pace given the right circumstances.
“The primary reason is obvisouly that qualifying pace because Timo set the fastest lap of the race,†Vasselon explained to Autosport.
“It wasn t just one lap all his lap times have been consistently extremely fast, so the problem is clearly the qualifying times.
“Only Hamilton was probably faster than Timo in the race. So it’s difficult to understand exactly what is going on.
“The only light we see is the race pace, because we are not just decent, we are quick. In Budapest and here we are talking about being the second fastest car, with only Hamilton possibly better. That’s what gives us a little bit of hope.
“We still have hope to find the problem, because we see we have potential.”
