Toyota determined to fight on despite poor Brazil

Finished 10th
By Huw Alban (08/04/03)
April 8 2003

One thing is for sure - the early season hype from Toyota has all but been wiped out after a disappointing Brazilian Grand Prix. On the plus side the team show signs of knuckling down and continuing to push for a positive result.

Crisitiano da Matta battled with an uncompetitive car to record his second Grand Prix finish in 10th place. "When we had full wet weather conditions, we were in reasonable shape and our pit-stop strategy got me as high as fourth when the safety car was deployed for the second time," he said on Sunday. "When the track started to dry out things got much worse and I picked up really bad oversteer. We have to look into the problem. We thought it was to do with the tyre pressures, but the car was slow on high and low tyre pressures in the drying conditions. Not the result I wanted today in front of my fans, but we are now heading into the European season, where I hope we can get good results."

Olivier Panis thought he was on a good strategy, but a suspension failure crash from Ralph Firman ended his race at the end of the pit straight. "With the race starting under the safety car due to the wet conditions, we took advantage of this to refuel the car and we had a good strategy," Olivier said via Toyota's official post race press release. "Unfortunately it was a bit difficult to drive the car with a full tank. I had some lack of grip but it would not have been so hard to continue. I felt a big impact from the rear of my car and I didn't really understand what had happened until Ralph Firman spoke with me and explained he had hit me. Obviously I am disappointed with the outcome, but the team has worked really hard all weekend, so I want to thank them and it is important for us not to give up. I am also very sorry for Fernando after his crash - I hope he is okay."

Team Principal, Ove Andersson, wants to put Brazil behind him and move on to the next test session, and perhaps better results in Europe. "I think it was a very, very difficult race for all the drivers out there today and there were too many accidents. Olivier had a bit of bad luck at the beginning, involved in an incident with Firman. With Cristiano, we don't understand why his car was not competitive and we will look into the data and investigate. We have to look forward to the next race and the start of the European season. Sooner or later, good results have to come our way."

The Toyota test team are back at Paul Ricard this week for another 3 days starting on Tuesday.