By TTF1 & Nick Sparkes
March 26 2005

Toyota completed two days of testing at Paul Ricard in the south of France this week. Ricardo Zonta and Olivier Panis kicked off the action on Wednesday with Jarno Trulli taking over from Panis on Thursday. Fridays running was cancelled as Toyota opted to honour the thirty day test limit. On Wednesday it was a hot and sunny day, reaching eighteen degrees Centigrade and the track reaching twenty-six degrees. Friday hot shot Ricardo Zonta set the second fastest time of the day with a total of 121 laps, whilst Olivier Panis who has at last recovered from his illness finished the day seventh. The day was largely trouble free with only a couple of minor stoppages. 

The second day was a mixture of changeable weather conditions with some rain showers interrupting the action. Ricardo Zonta comfortably set the fastest time of the day in one of last years TF104B’s, while Jarno Trulli in his TF105 suffered an off-track excursion due to the poor weather ending his day early. But they still managed 109 laps between them.

The third day of running was cancelled on Friday after the team was confident it had acquired enough information over the first two days. As part of the agreement to limit testing to thirty days during the season, Toyota opted to end the week's session early in order to conserve one of these invaluable days, particularly in spite of the inclement weather conditions in Le Castellet.

Dieter Gass - Chief Race and Test Engineer commented, "It was quite an eventful two days for us this week with some technical problems affecting our running. With Ricardo we were using the TF104B car to assess Michelin tyres for Imola, as well as more general tyre development testing. We are pleased with the results that Ricardo was able to collect over two days. Olivier also worked on tyres yesterday, more specifically on option tyre evaluation for Bahrain. He also carried out some software development work over his 70 laps. Jarno was due to begin set-up and aero work for next weekend's Bahrain GP, but poor weather and a spin into the barriers late in the day hampered his running. We nevertheless feel confident enough for Bahrain and decided to stop our programme one day earlier than planned to save one of our restricted number of test days."