Formula One news

Toyota confident in Istanbul

The Toyota team is in positive mood in Turkey after suffering a miserable weekend at the Monaco Grand Prix. With both cars having qualified on the back row of the grid in the principality and no points scored on Sunday, the Cologne-based team is confident of rectifying the situation at Istanbul Park.

Trulli could be making a return to the top ten shootout on Saturday

Jarno Trulli enjoyed a strong day in Eurasian country on Friday, with third place in morning practice being followed by a final result of sixth later in the day. "We mainly concentrated on setup work and tyre evaluation as usual on a Friday," said Trulli, who completed the highest number of laps in both sessions and a total of 67 for the day. "The track was pretty dusty, especially in the morning, so we felt a little lack of grip but that was expected here and it should improve tomorrow.

"The new aero bits are working well and they look like a good step which bodes well for the rest of the weekend. My lap times were competitive and the long runs went well so we will see what we can do for tomorrow - I am pleased with how things went today, so we should be competitive."

Dieter Gass, Toyota chief exgineer for tests and races

"It was a very productive day for us," added chief engineer Dieter Gass. "We had some aero updates on the car which we used successfully and we clearly looked better than we did in Monaco, as we anticipated here. As usual in Turkey on Friday, you have a very big circuit evolution and we saw that in the morning.

"In the afternoon, all cars between third and 16th places were within half a second and that means that only a difference of 10kg of fuel would completely mix up the pecking order; it is difficult to draw conclusions yet, but we are definitely on a different level of performance compared to Monaco so we can be optimistic for the weekend."

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