Glum faces all round at Toyota despite top ten grid position.
by Chris Hayes
Jarno Trulli once again planted his Toyota firmly inside the top ten in qualifying ahead of this weekend's Spanish Grand Prix, but the Italian was far from happy with the result, as were the Cologne-based squad's senior management.
Fresh from consecutive top six finishes in the last two races, Trulli hustled his way to eighth place overall, just losing out to Mark Webber's Red Bull and winding up seven tenths of a second off the outright pace. Team-mate Timo Glock, meanwhile, starts 14th after struggling to find the extra speed required to progress into Q3.
Such has been the comparative improvement in performance from Toyota this year, however, that both the drivers and management were disappointed with the qualifying effort.
"We've done an average job," admitted the big budget Japanese manufacturer's senior general chassis manager Pascal Vasselon. "The final result is not too bad, but not good either.
"Barcelona is the circuit where we spend most of our winter-time testing, yet almost every season when we come here for the race we have to re-do everything because the track conditions change so much. On Friday we had to re-visit most of the set-up directions that we had taken, like most of the other teams."
Trulli concurred that it had been a frustrating session, and cited the cross-winds as a particular problem.
"That was a tough session," the experienced Italian underlined. "The wind was affecting the car balance a lot, and this played a major role.
"Unfortunately in this type of conditions we have never been very strong here. We managed to make it into the top ten, but I am not really satisfied with how the session went overall. I was happy with my lap in Q3 to make the fourth row, but it could be a very difficult race."
Glock, on the other hand, was at a loss as to the reason for his lowly showing.
"I have no explanation because the feeling was good on the out-lap," mulled the German, "but when I came through turns one, two and three I felt the car sliding more and the time didn't come.
"Clearly our goal was to be in the top ten but it didn't work out. Q1 wasn't too bad but Q2 didn't go according to plan. On the second run we didn't make any mistakes, but for some reason I couldn't improve my time - and it looked like the same thing happened to Jarno on that lap
