Panis promises to push to the limit on Sunday

Fastest in practice
By Huw Alban (05/03/03)
April 5 2003

In summary, the team's qualifying performance this weekend has been one of highs and lows. Olivier Panis shone with a quickest time in free practice on Saturday, but a driver error qualified him 15th when it counted the most.

Rain dominated the Friday track time, and the team used the wet test knowledge to good effect pre-qualifying Olivier Panis 6th and Cristiano da Matta 11th. Despite the encouraging wet weather form, both the drivers felt that they could have got more out of their TF103 chassis with more time.

Saturday started brilliantly for the team, with Olivier Panis taking the P1 spot at the end of free practice. This was very encouraging as the track was now dry, with dry conditions set to continue over the second qualifying hour.

Unfortunately during his run Olivier made a slight error which cost him a lot of time, resulting in a 15th spot. Disappointment all round at Toyota. "When I started my qualifying lap, everything was fine with the car. I tried to push hard but I made a big mistake in the second sector and we are down in fifteenth as a result," Oliver said in the official team press release today.

" I really want to say sorry to the team because we did a great job in free practice this morning and the car is really good in terms of performance, so obviously I am extremely disappointed for the team and myself but tomorrow is another day and I will try to drive to the limit tomorrow to get some points."

Cristiano da Matta struggled to find the correct setup for his car and struggled all day, complaining of a lack of track time. "Due to the bad weather conditions yesterday, we simply haven't had enough track time to find the optimum set up on the car for this track," da Matta exclaimed after the sessions today.

"I experienced problems with the grip levels and the general handling of the car this morning, so we made some changes to the set-up, which did not make any difference. I am really unhappy to be starting my home GP from so far back on the grid, but we'll see what happens tomorrow."

The Brazilian qualified 18th.

Keizo Takahashi, General Manager, Car Design and Development added, "Unfortunately, we were not able to reproduce our speed from this morning's practice. We had trouble with the set up on Cristiano's car, and could not find the correct balance to allow him to get the most out of the car. Olivier made a mistake in the second sector of his flying lap and lost one second. It is disappointing because we should have been much higher up the grid for this race. Nevertheless we will keep at it and hope for a top eight finish tomorrow."