Formula One news

Toyota drivers qualify in top 10

Panasonic Toyota Racing will start the final race of the 2006 season from a very promising position after Ralf Schumacher and Jarno Trulli both qualified in the top 10 for Sunday's Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos.

Jarno will start from the second row of the grid after a superb lap at the end of Q3 earned him third spot for his best qualifying result of the season. Ralf also showed strong pace throughout and set the seventh fastest time to start from row four. The team is still pushing hard for fifth place in the Constructors' Championship and today's performance gives Ralf and Jarno a great chance to end the year with more points and a result to celebrate.

Jarno Trulli commented on today's good performance: "It is obviously great to be up so high and it has been a good weekend so far for us. We have been pushing hard all season to improve the car and you can see from today that we have definitely made a good step forward. So far this weekend we have looked pretty strong so I am confident because the car is performing well and we have everything we need to have a good race tomorrow. Our Bridgestone tyres are looking very competitive so I am looking forward to tomorrow when I hope I can challenge for the podium."

Ralf Schumacher said: "That was a reasonably good qualifying performance for the team. Jarno did a great job to get third place and seventh is a decent result for me too so both of us are in a positive position for tomorrow. From there we should be able score a good result here. Getting the right balance on the car this weekend has been a bit of a challenge but we worked at it this morning and found a reasonable set-up for qualifying. My lap in Q3 wasn't too bad, it was clean and I didn't make any mistakes but I simply was not quite quick enough to qualify any higher today."

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