Panis scores Toyota's best qualifying performance

5th on the grid
By Huw Alban (08/03/03)
March 8 2003

Toyota's strong form from Friday continued in the Saturday free practice and qualifying sessions. Oliver Panis managed a strong qualifying position of 5th, whilst rookie team mate Cristiano da Matta qualified 16th in his first ever F1 race.

"I am really happy about the performance of the car and it’s nice to be up the front end of the grid in my race debut for the team," Panis said. "I think we did a good job this morning to compare the Michelin tyres and I think we made a good choice. Now we have to wait until tomorrow to see how we go in the race. Everybody worked really hard and at the end of the day this was a positive qualifying, so I would like to thank every single member of the team, both here in Melbourne and also back at the factory in Cologne."

The team finished Saturday free practice in a strong 10th & 11th, with da Matta getting the better of his more experienced team mate. The consistent positions are a good sign as the team used the two sessions to work on race setup and tyre evaluation. Free practice was free from any mechanical gremlins, although oversteers on da Matta's car lead to a spin just before the end of the second session.

Da Matta explains, "We had a problem with the clutch in the session before, which meant I couldn’t do the warm-up (the 15 minute session just prior to the 2nd qualifying). That was not the perfect situation, but the team did a fantastic job to fix the problem in time for my qualifying lap. I was expecting a clear run for my single lap, so I was surprised to see a car right in front of me! "

"Psychologically it slows you down a little bit. Anyway, both Olivier and myself were on different strategies and I still think we can challenge for points tomorrow."

Team Principal, Ove Andersson commented, "It’s nice to be so far up the grid for a change. I wouldn’t like to say how we compare to the others. Only tomorrow will we see for the first time what strategies other people have been running."

Despite the rule change that the grid starts the race with the cars in the condition that they finished qualifying, fifth place on the grid represents a good chance of a points finish on Sunday. It's also worth noting that 5th is the team's best ever qualifying position to date.

TotallyToyotaF1.com is looking forward to writing about the teams second Australian Grand Prix points finish tomorrow - wouldn't it be good if Cristiano's strategy results in a two car points finish ? Remember that finishing positions 1 to 8 now score points.....