Trulli targets points despite lack of grip

The Japanese squad have endured a troubled start to their season, struggling to get enough grip to be competitive with their TF106.

Bridgestone have introduced a new tyre for this weekend's race, and Toyota admitted before the weekend that it was a step forward which was helping them get more grip.

Trulli was still off the pace on Friday, finishing in 16th position, but the Italian believes the team can score some points on Sunday.

"That was a normal Friday of tyre testing, set-up work and trying to find a good balance for the car," said Trulli. "We still have some work to do to get more grip if we want to be more competitive so we have to work on some solutions to that over the course of the weekend.

"We spent today collecting as much data as we can for the next two days but being a street circuit the track here always evolves a lot during the course of the weekend. We will have to wait and see how much we can improve in the next two days but our target is to make the points on Sunday."

Ralf Schumacher also admitted the team were struggling and said they will need to improve tomorrow if they want to be competitive in qualifying.

"Today's practice sessions made for a difficult start to the weekend here," he said. "We are again struggling to find general grip, so that is something we need to find for tomorrow to be in a decent position. The circuit always starts out dirty here so the grip of the tarmac will improve as the weekend goes on.

"We have some different tyres here that we hope will help us to solve some of the problems we have had with tyre temperature at the first two races. We already looked better in Malaysia so we hope to be able to continue to improve our set-up.

"Of course it is relatively cool here this weekend and the weather forecast is not very good. But if everything runs according to plan then we should aim to score points."