Toyota's new car good enough to battle the top 3 ?

Likes the new car
By Site Staff (06/03/03)
March 6 2003

In an interivew with Autosport magazine, Toyota lead driver Olivier Panis praised the 2003 car and the team for the progress made during the winter break. He now believes that Toyota can be the best of the rest this season.

The new TF103, described as an evolution at it's launch in January, has performed impressively in winter testing with Olivier Panis taking the fastest time slot on a number of occasions. In addition the new car appears to be as reliable as it's predecessor, bouying the teams mood in preparation for the season openner this weekend.

"Looking at the difference between the TF102 and this year's car I admit that I never expected the gap to be so big," stated Panis in this weeks issue of Autosport. "They've made a huge step forward and surpassed my expectations, so I'm very happy with the car.

"But we have to realise that the top three teams are still in another league. Everyone knows that."

On the subject of the top 3, a lot has been said about the disappointment being felt at Williams over the performance of their new car - although that has been tempered somewhat by claims that the team always perform badly in pre-season testing, but then sparkle when it comes to race weekends. McLaren look set to be the next best challenger to Ferrari, and with Williams experiencing problems is there a chance that Toyota could join the top three in only it's second year ?

Olivier thinks not. Although Toyota have made strides forward, he believes that the current top 3 will remain, but expects Toyota to be just behind them. "We've improved as a team in the last three months, but there are plenty of areas in which we have to make progress. I can see everyone is very motivated to put Toyota at the top. It's a young team that needs experience, but there's potential.

"I'm not going to say we'll be to do a bit better than last year. I think we have a car capable of battling with those behind the top three teams."