Trulli optimistic of change of luck

The Italian, who is yet to score a point this season, had a good day and was much happier about the handling of his Toyota following the progress made during last week's test at Barcelona.

"I haven't had much fortune in the first three races, but I am more confident about this weekend," said Trulli. "At last week's Barcelona test we took a different direction with set-up. That led to a big step forward, and today the handling of the car was pretty close to how I like it.

"We had to do more laps than usual because of Ralf's problems but we look good so far. We have some small steps on the car here and Bridgestone have brought some new tyres so that should give us a chance to get closer to the top teams.

"Historically Imola has never been a good track for Toyota, but I'm confident we can turn that record around."

Trulli's teammate Ralf Schumacher was not so lucky today, the German being hit by electrical problems that limited his running.

Schumacher covered just five laps in the afternoon and finished down in 22nd.

"Today was obviously not the perfect way to start the weekend. But Jarno showed that we have good potential here so I still have strong hopes," he said. "We saw in Melbourne that we can now get much more out of our package. We've made further improvements during testing so we hope to continue that progress here.

"We are making steps forward but we are still behind the top teams so we should aim for another strong finish in the points. That would be a good result as we continue our upward momentum."