Flying Italian star dazzles McLaren with one-lap pace.
by Chris Hayes
Jarno Trulli was on a charge in Kuala Lumpur as a scintillating qualifying lap catapulted him up onto the third row of the grid, a mere whisker behind the McLaren pairing.
The Toyota star - notorious for his searing one-lap pace - blitzed the demanding Herman Tilke-designed Sepang International Circuit en route to a stunning fifth place, less than a tenth of a second shy of Heikki Kovalainen and a scant two thousandths adrift of Lewis Hamilton. The 33-year-old memorably scored the Japanese manufacturer's maiden podium finish in the top flight in the 2005 Malaysian Grand Prix.
"This has been quite a satisfying weekend so far," enthused the Italian, who saw his hopes dashed in the season-opener Down Under last weekend after his TF108's battery exploded. "We have run without problems and the car has performed well and looked competitive. Today's lap time just shows that it's a big improvement compared to last year's car.
"We are all very pleased with this result, and it is definitely looking good for tomorrow's race. I'm confident for tomorrow because I've always performed well at this track. We just have to make sure that we finish the race without trouble, because I believe we can score good points."
An impressive effort from team-mate Timo Glock gave Toyota another reason to smile this weekend, after the German hustled his TF08 into the top-ten shoot-out, ultimately winding up tenth - a position he was allowed to keep this time, after he was removed from ninth spot in Australia for a gearbox change and having been deemed guilty of baulking another driver.
"I'm happy to have made Q3, but that was a difficult qualifying for me," reflected the F1 returnee, who was cleared to take part in proceedings in Malaysia following his horrific accident in Melbourne just six days ago. "In free practice this morning I had a better feeling for the option tyres in a qualifying set-up, but this afternoon I struggled to get the most out of them again. It was difficult to find the right set-up for it.
"In the end I was happy that I had a really good lap and a really good last sector to get into the top ten. Now we have to see how the weather goes, but if it's dry it will be hard for me to get the most out of the tyres.
"This is a really wide circuit and that means there are more possibilities to overtake, but I'm keeping a lid on my expectations. Hopefully we can finish in the top ten or break into the points. That would be a good result."
Meanwhile Toyota's management, buoyed by the performances of their two charges, remained optimistic ahead of Sunday's race.
"Jarno's qualifying position is what we expected so we are very happy with that," senior general chassis manager Pascal Vasselon divulged. "Today confirms yesterday's practice where we saw that he was in very good shape both on one-lap performance and long runs, which we will check tomorrow.
"Timo also did a very good job to make it into Q3 for the second time in two races. He is finding it hard to get the most out of the tyres, but apart from that tyre handling has been quite straightforward. Both compounds are running without major problems like graining and blistering, so we can head into the race confident of converting this into a strong finish."
