Toyota Racing used the typically English changeable weather conditions at Silverstone today to gather valuable information ahead of the opening round of the FIA World Endurance Championship.
With heavy rain before the opening practice session team prepared with Michelin wet tyres, and would switch to intermediates later in the day as the track dried.
With the two Audi’s dominating the top spots the first session saw the Alex Wurz/Nicolas Lapierre finish ahead of teammates Anthony Davidson, Stephane Sarrazin and Sebastien Buemi.
Wurz admitted while the weather conditions weren’t ideal they were the same for everyone and presented an equal challenge to all. ”It was an interesting day and we were able to go through some tests. Now we have to wait and see, particularly in terms of the weather; the forecast is a little bit better for the remainder of the weekend. The main focus now will be on the few laps we could complete in the dry. We will analyse the data we gained and try to optimise the package.”
Teammate Lapierre added “We’ve tested the different tyres – wet, inter and dry – now we have to take a good look on the data so we make the right choices. We tried various set-ups and it will be important to make a good debrief to extract the best from our car.”
The rain returned for the second session but did offer a short dry spell for slick tyre evaluation. With the changeable weather providing many set-up options on the car the team used the session to gather as much data as they could ahead of final practice tomorrow, finishing the session in third and sixth.
Englishman Davidson will be looking to impress in front of his home crowd and was happy with the days running : “In the second session I drove just one lap on the intermediate tyre and realised straight away that the track had dried and was ready for slicks. So we could do a tyre comparison on the slicks, which is good as it gives us some knowledge of these tyres.”
He added that the team will be looking to get more speed out of the set up of the car in the final session ahead of qualifying tomorrow.
