Ricardo Zonta 2005

1st practice

Ricardo set the pace for Toyota in the opening practice session of the Malaysian Grand Prix weekend. In searing conditions the Brazilian lapped the 5.543 kilometre circuit in 1:34.092s, two-tenths under last year’s best racing lap and just a second shy of the 2004 pole position time of 1:33.074s. which had him finishing as the fastest driver!!!

2nd practice

Ricardo managed to pull his times back to 3rd after dropping to eighth for a brief time, he finished with a lap time of 1:35.677 and completed 30 laps, which must be encouraging for the team. Ricardo had this to say about his practice sessions: "I enjoy driving at this track, but it is very demanding, both for the driver and for the car. We did a good job on the long runs today and were able to carry out a useful comparison between the two tyre compounds to assess their performance and consistency. I put a new set of tyres at the end of the second session, but a yellow flag in the final sector meant I had to back off. It was a bit of a shame because I could have easily repeated my time from the morning session."