Formula One news

Mixed start for Toyota at Sepang

Toyota braved heat and humidity on the opening day of a three-day test at Sepang, the venue for next month's Malaysian Grand Prix. Under the 2007 testing agreement, teams are only allowed to use one car at tests during the season so Franck Montagny was the sole Toyota driver in action today. 

Montagny made progress in the morning. However, a drive train failure just before lunchtime caused Franck to stop on the circuit and he lost time in the afternoon as repairs were carried out. He was back on the track to continue set-up comparisons later in the afternoon and that work will be continued by Ralf Schumacher tomorrow.

"It was not a bad day today, even if we did have a little problem when I stopped out on the circuit," said Montagny. "It took a little bit of time to resolve that but in general the car is looking quite good at the moment. We worked on different set-ups with these tyres and I think we are making good progress. Now we just have to work more on our set-ups to be sure we are going in the right direction. I am pretty content with the car on this track and in the hot weather, it is very drivable and there are no major problems."

Test team chief Gerd Pfeiffer added, "Today was a mixed start to our test at Sepang. The conditions here are very different to those we experienced in our pre-season tests in Europe but the team has adapted and we were able to do some useful work in the morning. Obviously, with the Malaysian Grand Prix so soon after this test, we concentrated mainly on finding a set-up for our car on this track. As well as that, we are continually pushing for more performance and today we got more information which should help us. We lost some time with the drive train failure early in the afternoon and that took a while to repair. But the team worked hard to get the car back on track, despite the tough weather conditions, and we resumed our programme in the afternoon."

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