It was a hard Sunday's work for Panasonic Toyota Racing at the British Grand Prix. On another hot day at Silverstone, Ralf Schumacher was confident of a good afternoon from 7th place on the grid but his race was cut short within seconds of the start. On the exit of Copse the German was pushed into a spin by Scott Speed's Toro Rosso. As he veered across the track he was collected by Mark Webber's Williams, putting both drivers out of the race.
Toyota is scheduled to continue testing its new TF106B package at Monza this week in preparation for the Canadian Grand Prix in a fortnight's time.
Ralf Schumacher: "Unfortunately that was just one of those things that happen in racing. It all began with my very bad start. I lost too many positions and found myself in traffic. That's how these things can kick off because in a mess like that no one really has any space. I had cars all around me so it was really difficult to see exactly what happened but I was hit from behind." "That sent me into a spin, which meant that I couldn't help veering into Mark's path. It was a racing incident and no one is to blame because no one does anything like that on purpose. But it's the second time in a row that we have struggled off the line so we should now work hard on improving that."
Tsutomu Tomita - Team Principal: "On Friday the team atmosphere was very good due to the performance of the car and the tyres here. But things started to go wrong with Jarno's engine failure in qualifying and when Ralf was hit on the opening lap today it meant both of our cars were effectively out of contention." "We had been working hard on our starts in the last few days so it was a surprise that Ralf's car was so slow to get away and we will definitely have to investigate what happened. It was a pity because considering the strategy we had he was clearly heavier than the cars in front of him so he was very competitive in qualifying."
