Putting the North American round behind them, teams headed back to Europe for the eighth Grand Prix of the season – the French Grand Prix. Magny Cours, host of the race, is infamous for track temperatures of over 50 degrees C every year. However, this year was unusually cool as the weekend got off to a start, with a cool ambient temperature of 17 degrees C and track temperature of 22 greeting the start of the first practice session.

Panasonic Toyota Racing came into the weekend after testing at Silverstone with a new aerodynamics package on board – the same package they elected to stay with for the French Grand Prix. Even though conditions were cooler than expected, the track was dry for the first practice session, during which Jarno Trulli completed 10 laps and Ralf Schumacher 17.

Just before the first session ended, though, Trulli’s machine developed a problem in the hydraulics system. Luckily, however, he had been able to complete his program before that point. The afternoon’s practice then went smoothly for both drivers, with Ralf completing 41 laps to finish the first day in 10th and Trulli 46 laps to finish in 14th.

Leading the field at the end of the first day was Kimi Raikkonen (Ferrari), with a time of 1’15”382.

The second day of the French Grand Prix was highlighted by Qualifying. Saturday at Magny-Cours was greeted by clear blue skies from morning, with temperatures warmer than the day before.

The first practice session of the day started at 11am to an ambient temperature of 20 degrees C and a track temperature of 28. Despite a time-consuming setup caused by problems with understeer on Friday, Trulli managed to pull it together to finish the morning’s session in ninth. Ralf Schumacher finished further back in 14th, but worked smoothly through his setup, clocking up 22 laps along the way.

The first period of qualifying got underway to respective ambient and track temperatures of 22 and 23 degrees C. Both Panasonic Toyota Racing machines made it through to the second period in 7th and 16th, highlighted by Ralf’s time of 1’15”760. Trulli also performed strongly with his time of 1’16”118.

Competition was stiff in the second period with less than one second separating drivers positioned between 6th and 15th. Caught up amongst this, both drivers marked successive times in the range of 1’15”. This was good enough to enable Trulli to scrape through to the second period in 10th, but not enough for Ralf Schumacher, who failed to make the top ten cut-off despite being a mere 0.16 seconds behind his team mate.

Left alone to represent the team in the fight over the top 10 positions, Trulli put in a clean run to finish as he did in the United States Grand Prix in eighth. Starting from the fourth row on the grid, Trulli was in a good position to look at grabbing back-to-back points.

Felipe Massa (Ferrari) took out pole position honours with a time of 1’15”034, his fourth for this season and seventh to date.

Conditions at Magny-Cours on Sunday were unstable, as forecast, with heavy cloud cover threatening rain. What’s more, there had already been light showers three hours before the start of the race, looking like it would mean the first wet race this season.

However, the rain stopped in enough time to enable the track to dry out and the 56th French Grand Prix got underway in dry conditions and ambient and track temperatures of 25 and 31 degrees C, respectively.

Starting from eighth, Trulli faced a great deal of tussling for places in corners one and two from the machines around him, before heading into the back straight. Then in the Adelaide Hairpin immediately after that, heavy braking by the machines directly to the front and rear left him with no place to go. Trulli’s own attempt to brake proved too little and too late as he crashed into Heikki Kovalainen (Renault) in front, forcing Trulli to pit. As it turned out, the steering rod was damaged in the altercation to the extent that the steering on the front left of his TF107 no longer worked, thereby spelling the end of the race for him in just the first lap.

Ralf Schumacher, who started from further back in 11th, was right behind Trulli as he crashed in the hairpin, and with the two Honda machines on either side of him, he was also left with no place to go and relinquished two places to the Honda’s. After this, however, he put in a strong performance with no mistakes, managing to grab Rubens Barrichello’s place from him during his first pit stop. By the 34th lap, he had worked his way up into the top 10, but he was unable to get any further, despite his determined efforts, and finished the race out of the points in 10th.

Result:
Third-position starter, Kimi Raikkonen (McLaren) crossed the line first to steal victory, his second of the season after his first in the opener and 11th to date.