Formula One news

Toyota's best qualifying of the season

Panasonic Toyota Racing is celebrating its best qualifying performance of the season after Ralf Schumacher and Jarno Trulli secured the second row of the grid for Sunday's Japanese Grand Prix.

Following a difficult qualifying session last week in China, today was a much better day for Toyota. Both Ralf and Jarno showed quick pace in all three of the sessions and they easily made it into Q3 before setting the 3rd and 4th fastest times respectively.

Ralf Schumacher said about his qualifying session: "That was a great achievement for the whole team. After the last two races we needed that to show where we really are in terms of pace. We knew from the previous races that we were always there from a lap time point of view and we needed to show that. Today, with the clear help of our Bridgestone tyres, we were able to show that our car is a good car. We've obviously struggled for results in the second half of this season, but our car has improved a lot. I've always said that if we had a good weekend and the tyre is right then we could be heading for the podium."

Jarno Trulli commented on his qualifying result: "It's great to be so far up the grid. We've been competitive all weekend, especially today, and we were confident that we could have a result like this. It was very windy out there but the car balance still felt good throughout the afternoon and we were very competitive. I was very quick throughout qualifying and I could have made it into the top three, but I missed out by a few hundredths."

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