German GP Tyrrell race notes

GERMAN GRAND PRIX [02.08.98] STRONG RESULT AFTER A DIFFICULT WEEKEND

HOCKENHEIM, GERMANY, August 2, 1998 -- Toranosuke Takagi, ran strongly in today's German Grand Prix at the Hockenheimring to bring his Tyrrell-Ford across the finish line in 13th place. The team adopted a single-stop fuel and tyre strategy for one of the fastest, most demanding Formula One events on the calendar. The second Tyrrell, normally driven by Ricardo Rosset, did not take part in today's event after the Brazilian crashed heavily on Saturday morning, prior to the qualifying session. After taking medical advice, the team made the difficult decision to withdraw Rosset from the event. Takagi also had a high-speed accident on Saturday and took the start of the German Grand Prix in the team's spare chassis after it was found his normal race car was too badly damaged to be repaired on site.

TORANOSUKE TAKAGI (No 21) Finishing position: 13th Best lap: 1:50.430 "It was good to be able to race against the 1997 Tyrrell drivers, Mika Salo and Jos Verstappen, for much of this afternoon. Thanks to good pit work by the team, I came out ahead of Mika after my pit stop and then really enjoyed being able to race with him. Two laps before the chequered flag, Michael Schumacher overtook me going into one of the chicanes. I lost downforce briefly as a result, locked up a front wheel and went straight across the chicane, fortunately without doing any damage. I kept up the pressure on Mika and eventually re-passed him on the last lap just after the third chicane.

"Overall, it feels good to have finished well after yesterday's big shunt. My race engineer, David Brown, told me on the grid this afternoon to bring the car back in one piece, and I did, so I'm happy. In Hungary, if we find a good chassis set-up, we could be in even better shape than we have been here. What I really want now is to score my first World Championship point."

DR HARVEY POSTLETHWAITE, Managing Director, Tyrrell "Tora's finishing position does not do justice to his race with Verstappen and Salo, which demonstrated consistency and tenacity. He continues to show great promise. It is a credit to the team that the car ran faultlessly after a weekend where there was so much accident damage."