“I can’t wait to get back into the car," he admits, "I may not have been given the green light to compete in the USA, but I hope the medical examination at Magny-Cours will be a formality. The reason why I wasn’t allowed to drive at Indianapolis had nothing to do with how I felt. Instead, the problem was the risk involved in suffering a second accident within such a short space of time. That’s also why I wasn’t allowed to test last week. But I’ve used the time to focus intensively on preparing for this next race.”
Unusually,
BMW struggled at Magny-Cours last year, but team director Mario Theissen is hopeful that there will be no repeat in 2007.
"We were up against it a bit here last season, but managed to escape with a point despite starting from eleventh and 16th," he muses, "The team has come to expect good grid positions in the top ten nowadays – and Sebastian met that standard in his first ever
F1 qualifying at Indianapolis. We have finished in the points in every race so far this season but, in the last two GPs, we only managed to get one car to the finish, so we are looking to pick up points with both cars at Magny-Cours"
Both cars will be running with the same engines as at Indianapolis, even though the regulations would have allowed it to change Heidfeld's V8 this time around.
Toyota – Ralf Schumacher (#11), Jarno Trulli (#12):
After Jarno Trulli scored his best result of the season with sixth place at Indianapolis, the Toyota team heads to Magny-Cours in confident mood, and testing at
Silverstone last week only served to boost morale further as both drivers set fast laps during a trouble-free three days.
Magny-Cours also sees a return to more standard aerodynamic set-ups and, while the team will benefit from several aero updates to the TF107, general manager Pascal Vasselon is confident that there can be some repeat of last year's French GP when Ralf Schumacher took fourth place and Jarno Trulli only missed out on a podium because of a brake problem.
