Panasonic Toyota Racing completed its week’s testing with a third day of running at Jerez de la Frontera in the south of Spain on Thursday. However, following the impressive reliability of the first two days, Jarno Trulli was forced to miss some of the morning’s session after an oil leak.

The test team changed his engine and that ate into much of the early action when the track was at its quickest but the afternoon was more successful and Jarno ended up with a total of 70 laps of set-up, starts, suspension, brakes and aero work. Toyota’s next racing appointment is the Hungarian GP at the Hungaroring, where similarly high temperatures are expected.

“The main thing to say was that it was so hot!” Jarno said. “When the asphalt is as hot as this it makes it difficult to get consistent data. Still, it was quite a positive day, we tried out various things in preparation for the next race in Hungary, which is likely to be just as hot and could be even hotter. We missed some track time in the morning due to an oil leak. There was no breakage but the problem required an engine change. That made for a busy afternoon but we carried out some useful work on starts, aero and set-up for the Hungaroring. In the end we made it through our planned 70 laps.”

“The day started slowly for us because of the problem we had with an oil leak. It started early in the day and though there was no breakage we changed the engine when the leak got too heavy. The afternoon was more positive and Jarno’s program was similar to Ralf’s,” said Gerd Pfeiffer, Test Team Manager. “We carried out set-up and aero comparisons for the next grand prix in Hungary, along with suspension and starts. Overall this has been a good test and it’s always important to run in hot conditions. This year’s mileage restriction for testing means that there is no room for error. If you take the wrong direction with any testing you have no margin if you want to keep running at the end of the year. So we have to budget carefully for the laps we use. But this week has worked well and gone according to plan.”