USA: Troubled times for Toyota

By Nick Sparkes
June 18 2005

Panasonic Toyota Racing suffered major problems during Friday’s and Saturday’s free practice sessions with Ralf Schumacher ending his weekend on Friday afternoon after a huge crash at Turn 13. Then Saturday saw very little running from all of the Michelin runners as they investigated Ralf’s tyre.

The first session on Friday went without a hitch, with Ricardo Zonta putting in most of the work to end up just a tenth before McLaren’s Juan Pablo Montoya in second place. Ralf Schumacher and Jarno Trulli ended the session in eleventh and twelfth places respectively.

 

The second session of the day would turn out to be a disaster for the Toyota team. Minutes after Ricardo Zonta suffered a tyre failure, Ralf Schumacher spun and hit the wall at speeds well over 150mph on the final corner of the lap, Turn 13. This was the scene of Ralf’s 2004 accident, but unlike last year the German was able to walk away, if a little dazed, from the incident. A few hours later Ralf had this to say about the incident: I was approaching the last corner when I felt something go wrong on the left-hand side. We will now have to investigate exactly what happened and why. The morning session had been fine, although the track was very slippery. I’ve never had much luck here as a driver, but I’m still hopeful that record will improve.” This mean’t Jarno Trulli did most of the running, but because of the concern over Ricardo and Ralf’s tyre failures the Italian completed a limited numbers of laps to finish the day tenth. “First let me say that I’m glad that Ralf is okay after such a heavy impact. It’s really bad luck for him to go off twice in two years at the worst point of the circuit. That was a difficult day for the whole team. Because of the two accidents we did very little running. Of course it was also a difficult decision to go out again later in the session, but luckily nothing happened to my car. The strange thing is that so far the car doesn’t feel too bad and we’re reasonably competitive. But we don’t yet have a clear idea about what the problems are with the tyres, so we’re not fully confident yet about running the cars. We’ll have to analyse everything tonight.” 

 

Saturday saw an almost boycott from the weekend from all the Michelin runners as after an investigation, the tyres used by all the Michelin teams might not be able to withstand the nature of the Indianapolis racetrack. Therefore a different specification would have to be flown out which would not reach the teams by the start of the qualifying session that afternoon. Michelin are still seeking permission from the FIA to allow their teams to change tyres before the start of tomorrow’s race to save the drama of having some three or four tyre failures during the race. Also Ralf Schumacher would not be continuing on with the Grand Prix, after a decision was made to allow Ralf to rest, and to return in two weeks time at the French Grand Prix. So Friday Tester Ricardo Zonta would replace Ralf Schumacher for the Grand Prix, meaning for the second year running, Zonta would be able to compete in a Formula One race. Therefore the first session saw very little running by the Michelin teams, with neither Zonta nor Trulli setting a time. Normality was resumed for the final session though, with all the teams setting a time. Trulli put in seven laps to go seventh, whilst Zonta completed ten laps to go ninth. After all the drama of yesterday Toyota were still competitive, but with the concern over tyres still circling the team, would this affect them in anyway going into qualifying? Time will tell.