By Nick Sparkes
June 6 2006

With its high speed straights and its flowing corners, many teams use data gathered from Barcelona to lay the foundations for their set-ups at Silverstone. Both tracks having similar characteristics, although the weather isn’t one of them! Pascal Vasselon talks about the simulates and differences between Barcelona and Silverstone. “The track is similar to Barcelona in terms of technical characteristics, with many long high speed corners. So that leads to the same kind of compromise with the aerodynamic package. We run fairly high levels of downforce but have to avoid the drag penalty down the long straights. Barcelona does not have such high speed changes of direction as we see at Becketts, though, so we need some front end understeer in order to achieve stability. Like Barcelona we will also be looking at the harder end of the Bridgestone range of tyres - but in Britain we also pay closer attention than usual to wets!”

Just like many in the Formula One paddock, the Toyota team will be watching the weather closely throughout the weekend. “We can get a good idea of the temperature range a week before the event but we will be avidly checking the weather forecast for cloud coverage between now and Sunday."