Toyota has arrived at the Hockenheimring in Germany and the team was determined to get a good result. Unfortunately bad luck decided to visit the Toyota team, but in the end it wasn’t that bad as it looked at all.

‘A positive start’. That was the keyword for Fridays and Saturdays practice sessions. Ralf Schumacher, Jarno Trulli and Ricardo Zonta were back on track after the British Grand Prix.

These were problem-free practices for Ralf and Jarno. They had to wait a little while for the tire decision but that didn’t cause any problems. Ricardo did, as always, a good job by putting himself to the 2^nd and 5^th place on Friday. It was a bit surprising to see Zonta on the 5^th place in the second session, but fortunate it wasn’t without a reason. There was a threat of rain in the afternoon and later he got stuck in traffic.

Fortunately they had enough time to finish their program in the end. Everybody of the Toyota team was looking forward to a good Grand Prix.

We have had the practices and now it’s time for the qualification. This time it was Jarno’s turn to got out first, he was fast enough to capture the 9^th place. When I saw that, I was a bit surprised that the ‘super qualifier’ was only 9^th. Fortunately it was because he had a little problem with his brakes and didn’t have the confidence to push 100% for a fast lap. Which is very smart by the way. It’s always better to run a slow lap then to run in a barrier when the brakes give up!

We know that Ralf is struggling a bit with qualifications, but as normal, he did everything he could do to drive a good lap. Happily he didn’t have any problems with the car and was looking forward to the race. He got the 12^th time which means he is on the sixth row on the grid.

With such an optimism I had for the qualification, it was disappointing; 9th and 12^th were the results Toyota managed to get this time. Look at the bright sight of this, these results aren’t normal anymore for Toyota. The years before it were the regular results Toyota got. This year it is much better!

After reading Saturdays report I got my optimism back for the race and, as everyone of Toyota, was looking forward to it!

This wasn’t going to be Jarno’s race of the season, and you could see that in the first corner when Mark Webbers Williams pushed him off. If that wasn’t bad enough he also got a puncture. As you know driving with a puncture is not the best thing to do so he immediately went in the pits to change his left front tire.

After his planned pit stop everything went well, he overtook some drivers and then…. he tried to overtake Heidfeld and at the same time blue flags were hanging out. After that he let Montoya get passed, but still had been given a drive-through penalty! If you thought the bad-luck is over, you are wrong…! During the end of the race he got saddled up with pneumatic problems in the engine. If you have such problems you are forced to stop the race, and so he did. In the final lap of the German Grand Prix Trulli stopped his car, got out of it and went to the Toyota garage.

Compared to Trulli, Ralf had a good race. The started wasn’t really good. He lost some places but that wouldn’t be a problem with a great strategy of the team. He was in for a two-stop strategy what explains his 12^th position in qualifying. After the first stop he got some problems getting the tires back to shape and at the same time he was looking for grip. But still he a drove very strong race on 6^th place behind Renault’s Gian-Carlo Fisichella and a few laps further behind his brother Michael. Ralf was very close with Fisichella and Michael. He drove so well that if he would have had more time he could have overtaken his brother and maybe even Fisichella! Unfortunately he didn’t have more time, but a 6^th place is never a bad result and we can be happy with that. In this case it are the points that matters.

I expected a very good race here from Toyota. It was a mix of a good and a bad race. Trulli was the one with the bad race, but he just had major bad luck. The drama didn’t start because of faults within the team. That is something reassuring. Ralf drove a very strong race without any faults and managed to take the 6^th place. He gained one place in the drivers’ championship with 26 points, Jarno unfortunately loses one place and stays on the 31 points. Toyota stays 4^th in the constructors’ championship with 57 points and with that increased their total distance to Williams to ten points.

In the end I can be happy because we got three points and both cars have their pace back.

With this information we can be looking forward for another good Grand Prix, which is held in Hungary next weekend.

View a Printer Friendly version of this Story.

Bookmark or share this story with:

• Digg
• Delicious
• Facebook
• Reddit
• Stumbleupon

SPORTNETWORK SPECIALS

• Think you know your sport? Click here to try the Sportnetwork Prize Quizzes

Toyota F1 Poll