A 'wet' final day for Toyota at Jerez

A good soaking
By Huw Alban (17/03/03)
March 17 2003

Toyota wrapped up a productive four day test at Jerez on Saturday, with Olivier Panis contributing to a special wet tyre test for Michelin. For this the Jerez circuit needed to be artificially soaked in water using two huge water trucks.

The purpose of the test was to prepare for the unpredictalbe conditions that often prevail in Malaysia, and despite recording the slowest time of the day Panis still found the day productive.

"Today was entirely run on an artificially wet track in order to carry out development work for our partner Michelin," he said to Toyota-F1.com on Saturday evening. "Two trucks were basically pouring water on the track every forty minutes to keep it significantly wet. We learnt a lot today and certainly gathered valuable information ahead of Malaysia, where weather conditions can be relatively unstable. It might seem a bit of a tight schedule to come back to Europe between the two overseas races, but I feel it is important to contribute to our teamwork on the car's reliability and performance as early as possible in the season. And we had two productive days in that respect."

Toyota take to the test track again in Spain, at Barcelona, on the 26th March for another 3 day test.

Times from Jerez on Saturday:

01 A. Wurz McLaren MP4-17 1'26''418 -- 103 laps
02 M. Gene Williams FW25 1'28''251 +1''833 88
03 O. Panis Toyota TF103 1'28''652 +2''234 68