By Andrew Cutler
June 29 2007

Something "odd" happened today with the squad from Faenza. After showing their "customary" pace - and getting about their usual results - in the first practice session, Scuderia Toro Rosso came out and stunned everyone with their performances in the second session.

Now their competitors are left to sratch their heads and wonder; "Are these guys for real?" It's a question that not even Scott and Tonio are sure of the answer to.

In a day where Ferrari lead the way, Scott would run almost two seconds off of the lead pace in the morning session, placing only 15th on the charts: Tonio would do a little better, placing 11th, just over 1.5 seconds back.

The afternoon session would be another story. Scott would jump up to an astounding 3rd on the time charts, only .32 seconds off of Felipe Massa's top time of 1:15.453. Tonio would find himself in 5th spot, just a fraction under 1/2 second slower than the Brazilian.

"I'm not sure exactly where we stand," Speed said afterwards, "as you don't know what the others are doing in terms of fuel load. Certainly we were on the low side when I did my quickest lap. The gearbox is definitely a step forward and the car wasn't bad today, though we did struggle a bit from understeer. This afternoon I had a few problems - including one with the steering wheel - that prevented us from getting through all our programme apart from looking at the tyre comparison, and even that wasn't so conclusive as I had a problem on the warm-up lap for my last run. Generally, we look more competitive than we have in past races. Now we just need to work hard, keep our heads down and try not to make any mistakes for the rest of the weekend."

"Maybe the quick times look nicer than they are in reality," Tonio cautioned. "We still have to work on improving the balance of the car, as the handling is not perfect yet. Even so, it is nice to see our names near the top of the order, at least on paper. Now we need to work on improving our traction and front-end grip. For sure we are more competitive as the car has made a big step forward, mainly with the new seamless-shift gearbox which makes for much quicker changes. However, the other teams have probably also improved in other areas. Tomorrow we will work on generally improving the set-up, but we can look to the rest of the weekend in a positive frame of mind."