Trulli makes immediate Toyota debut.

No sooner had the world woken up to the fact that he was now a Toyota driver than Jarno Trulli was climbing behind the wheel of a TF104B at the Silverstone group test.

The Italian had only confirmed his immediate exit from the Renault team on Wednesday morning, but had done the deal that many had predicted with Toyota 24 hours earlier, and was able to join his new employer at Silverstone - where he ran against former Renault team-mate Fernando Alonso and 'replacement' Jacques Villeneuve.

As with the Canadian on Wednesday, Trulli insisted that his first outing in a new car was merely to become acquainted with its idiosyncrasies and not to set times. The Italian completed 81 laps with a best time of 1min 17.915secs, putting him sixth overall and seven-tenths of a second off new team-mate Olivier Panis' best from Wednesday.

"I've arrived at Panasonic Toyota Racing a bit earlier than I expected, but in Formula One you have to be ready for anything, and this is what sometimes happens," Trulli said of his whirlwind engagement, "The team has given me a splendid welcome and we've already started to work well together in our first day of testing. It's also nice to be working again with Mike Gascoyne, who is an excellent engineer.

"It's still too early to judge the car, but I've found some very good, positive aspects to the package, while there are parts which can still be improved. I think everyone in the team knows the problems which require work. All the team's drivers will work well together with the rest of the team to work on improving the car's speed for the future. There's a good atmosphere and a nice bunch of people and it's good to get started early in preparation for 2005."

Toyota team boss Tsutomu Tomita has confirmed that Trulli will not replace either Panis or Ricardo Zonta in the three remaining races this season.