Toyota performance more like it on Saturday

10th today
By Huw Alban (23/03/03)
March 23 2003

After a difficult and fustrating Friday, the team worked hard overnight turning the TF103s performance around. The drivers did good in the qualifying session, lining up 10th and 11th.

The team press release for Saturday reports that the team were a lot more competitive Saturday morning free practice with da Matta finished the session in P5 (1m37.093s). Olivier Panis's car suffered an engine failure, placing the Frenchman in P12 overall (1m37.623).

Olivier Panis was the 7th car out for the qualifying session, and put in a spirted performance to qualify in provisional pole position. The British TV commentary noted that the Bridgestone tyres were worst at losing their speed in the last few corners, something that Panis no doubt took advantage of. One the entire field had run, with track temperature slowly decreasing over the session, Panis found himself in a strong 10th position.

"Definitely, I feel that we have improved the car a lot for today," he said after the session. "We struggled with the set-up in free practice yesterday, so we worked a lot overnight and made some real improvements. As a result, we have been a little bit more competitive, and I think we have worked really hard this morning to choose the best strategy for tomorrow's race. Overall I am quite positive and happy with tenth on the grid."

Cristiano de Matta had been threatening to outperform his team mate all weekend - a fact not lost on the media covering the Grand Prix weekend - but his qualifying run was hampered by having to take to the spare car. Despite not being in the spare before, da Matta tunred on the sparkle and qualified just behind his team mate in 11th.

"It was unfortunate that we had to change to the spare car for qualifying today. The car still performed well, but I didn't have everything 100% tuned the way I wanted. Considering that I changed cars and that it's my first Malaysian GP, I am happy with eleventh place, but it could have been even better. The car has been running well today and if we look at the big picture, I think we are looking in pretty good shape," the Brazilian commented.

General Manager, Car Design and Development, Keizo Takahashi, summed up the Friday and Saturday sessions nicely and outlined the teams aims for Sunday.

"In the morning practice session, we had some problems on Olivier's car but the overall set up of both cars was much better than yesterday. We are very satisfied with the result for both drivers in this qualifying session. Okay, it could have been a bit better, but we set regular top ten qualifying results as one of our targets for this season, which we achieved today and tomorrow we have the opportunity to realise the second of these aims, namely to win some world championship points."