By Nick Sparkes
March 30 2006

Toyota’s Mike Gascoyne and his team have been working flat out since the first race of the season 3 weeks ago to solve their tyre problem which has dogged them so far this season. Here in Australia, which hosts the third race, Gascoyne thinks the team have found the problem. Although its expected to be cooler than first thought, with the Australian Grand Prix not hosting the opening race because of the Commonwealth Games, Mike Gascoyne is confident ahead of this weekends Grand Prix.

“Obviously we will have cooler conditions in Australia so we have to keep a very close eye on getting the tyre to work. But I am sure we now have a better idea of how to do that so I hope we will be able to cope with that particular situation."

Mike also commented on the on going tyre issue where the TF106 has struggled to generate enough grip, after a hard week of testing before this weekends Grand Prix, Mike is confident the team, along with Brdigestone, are working on a solution.

“I think it's a combination of set-up and us understanding the problem and reacting to it. I think in Bahrain and to some extent in Malaysia, our tyres in general were too hard and we need to push to go to softer compounds because our car is very gentle on the tyres. We need to be working at the softer end of the range compared to other Bridgestone teams.”

Onwards to this weekends Grand Prix, Mike doesn’t expect much action during Friday at Albert Park.

“It's a street circuit, not in regular use and so it has low grip on the Friday and evolves quite a lot over the weekend. It's always an interesting venue and a fun place to visit. Logistically it's quite difficult with the long distances involved but other than that, there's nothing much to be too concerned about.“