Luxembourg GP Tyrrell Friday notes

LUXEMBURG GRAND PRIX PRACTISE [25.09.98] SPIN CITY

NURBURGRING, GERMANY, September 25, 1998 -- Perhaps the relaxing autumn sunshine of the Eifel region of Germany caused drivers to lose concentration briefly, but a spate of spins and off-course excursions punctuated the first day of preparations for Sunday's Luxembourg Grand Prix. Tyrrell drivers Ricardo Rosset and Toranosuke Takagi were no exceptions, both experiencing spins in the course of the day's two one-hour sessions as they worked on setting up their cars for the tight Nurburgring circuit. Neither car sustained significant damage and the team will continue to work through their programme of race preparation tomorrow.

TORANOSUKE TAKAGI (No 21) Position: 18th Best lap: 1:22.792 "We made some useful progress this morning until I had a slight gearbox problem toward the end of the session. This afternoon, we made some adjustments to the chassis and I was then doing a couple of longer evaluation runs on Goodyear's Prime and Option tyres. Unfortunately, I lost the back end of the car coming out of the last corner on to the pit straight and spun. I hit the Armco on the inside of the corner, fortunately not too hard, but hard enough to puncture a tyre, and that meant we lost half the session. It's not a good way to start and we will have to make up for lost time tomorrow."

RICARDO ROSSET (No 20) Position: 21st Best lap: 1:23.644 "The track was slippery and lacking in grip first thing, but it improved as the morning wore on and rubber was put down in the corners. The chassis balance of my car initially was understeer tending to snap oversteer on the exit from some corners, but my race engineer and I made progress on improving that. I spun a couple of times during the afternoon exploring the limits, and the last time the car became stuck in the gravel trap at turn five. It's a shame because it meant we lost the last 20 minutes of the session."