SPARKY: Barcelona Report
The Fallen, Fall

The Circuit de Catalunya has been kind to Toyota since the partnership of Jarno Trulli and Ralf Schumacher. Last year they enjoyed one of their most successful Grand Prix’s with the two drivers jockeying for position, tenths of seconds apart. On that day, Jarno Trulli would beat Ralf Schumacher to the podium slot. This time around a repeat performance would have been a godsend, as the team hadn’t even got into double figures in the constructors’ championship. And as you would expect from a torrid 2006 season, the team left Spain in the same situation it began.

Ignoring practice, which has all the excitement of selling your middle finger, qualifying for Toyota would prove to be their most successful of the 2006 season. What I love about the new system is the way you tense up as the minutes count down, with Toyota edging closer to the knockout zone, you can’t help but stand in front of the TV begging the driver who is currently on a faster lap to go off or for there to be a red flag. But as we all know, Toyota made it through into the final session, which was becoming a bit of a habit for the team and something which has placed both cars inside the top ten in recent races. A well planned strategy of leaving their fast lap right up until the last minute put Ralf Schumacher sixth and Jarno Trulli seventh, their best performance so far this year. Plus the benefit of saving tyres during practice and qualifying would give the team an added advantage over the cars in front, although any chances of catching Renault and Ferrari were zero as they seemed to be on rails around the circuit, and were in a different league to the cars behind.

Race day brought a lot of optimism that this would be our day; finally we would have both cars in the points and that this was where our 2006 season starts. And having fallen right down and out of the points in the last few Grand Prixs, I was surprised that the fall continued into this one. What I thought was a good start become a bad one a couple of metres down the track, an onboard reply from Kimi Raikkonen’s McLaren (which started behind the two Toyota’s) would show the Finn splitting the two red and white cars and overtaking the pair easily into the first corner, Jarno jumping Ralf in the process. Not the start we wanted. Now behind Rubens I expected our cars to stick with his Honda, but as the laps went on we started to fall back, Jarno seemingly holding Ralf up. On lap 16 Ralf made his move, from along way back, locking up his right front tyre, skidding into Jarno’s rear wheel. The commonsense side of the team probably could have ordered or at lest warned Jarno that Ralf was behind and much faster, and an overtaking pass looked highly probable. Ralf could had given advanced warning to the team that he was going to overtake his teammate, or maybe even Jarno could had taken the situation into his own hands and moved over, swapping positions. Contact was made, Ralf lost his front wing, and Jarno survived but would later drop back, right out of the points. Much has been said about whose at fault, and like here much has been said on how to prevent such incidents. A biased point of view could be that Ralf has always ran into his teammates, Fisichella and Montoya all have experience of a bit of German contact. Another biased side could be that Jarno does have the tendency to ‘fall asleep’ during a race, and maybe didn’t check to see if there was a Toyota sailing past. Okay, a number of Formula One expects will inform me that you can’t see a lot out of your mirrors whilst doing 180mph, and that was probably the case here. They say the worst person to take off is your teammate, and after a difficult start that Toyota have had, this was something they surely didn’t need. Imagine if a similar incident happened in front of their home crowd in Japan or even Germany. Both drivers admitted to the team allowing them to race, but obviously to a degree. In a world of pressure, ambition, the need to succeed and determination to win in Formula One, there should be a degree of team orders where the faster of the two drivers should be let through. It can be unfair to dish out the blame in these types of situations because at the end team issues need to be fixed with team bonding. But seeing as I have done similar things in the past, this is what I think. Ralf made an optimistic move, he was too far back, he realised too late that the move was never on by locking his wheels, and to put it honestly, he got what he deserved. Had he taken the pair out, then it would had been unfair on Jarno and a total embarrassment to Ralf and the Toyota team. But, there are always two sides to every story, so I’ll let you piece together your own evidence.

Jarno Trulli. A man whose never far away from bad press, if he’s not holding people up he’s moving backwards down the grid faster than you can count to ten. With his contract quickly expiring there doesn’t seem much desire to resign him at Toyota. Ralf already has an extension and some would have expected Jarno to have the same, I mean he did bring us our first podium and pole. But ever since the midway point last year his pace and results have been nothing more than what we would had expected, sometimes worse. He moves backwards more than he moves up and at Spain dropped back behind a BMW and a Williams that started behind him. So he had handling problems but he seems to have had problems at almost every race and sadly excuses cant last forever. This time last year even Ralf had scored points, whilst Jarno was racking in the podiums. Personally I feel he’s running out of time, he has fallen and then fallen some more. With so much talent surrounding Formula One, if you make a number of errors your out of a job, the same goes for football, tennis and rugby. But, there is still time. Toyota hasn’t built a perfect car, so I guess the team and Jarno are even.

The TF106B makes its appearance at the next race, which is expected to be flooded with improvements. They need to take a step up in almost every department if they are to challenge for a number of points and a good test will be at Monaco. Jarno needs to prove he is still the racer we saw take our first podium last year, Ralf needs to show us he can still overtaken without losing parts of his car whilst Toyota need to show they can take on the worlds finest in a race. The fallen needs to rise.