Toyota troubled by gremlins

Hugely Disappointed
By Guest Admin
May 18 2003

Toyota report that the team is "Hugely disappointed" about their lack of performance during the Austrian Grand Prix, failing to recover from a poor start with their initial set up on Friday.

Cristiano da Matta did finish the race in 10th place but Olivier Panis failed to finish, when debris damaged his suspension and punctured a front tyre.  Cristiano's was lucky to even start the race when on two occasions his launch control failed and the start had to be aborted.

Cristiano da Matta
"At the start, I pressed the launch button as I normally do and the car just stalled. There was something wrong with the launch electronics. For the restart and the pit stops, we decided not to risk it and instead did manual starts. I would say that the weekend is below the expectations I had, but considering the difficulties in practice on Friday and Saturday, I think tenth place is more or less the best we could do today. Things were not made easier starting from the back of the grid. The tricky part has come from us not finding a proper set-up on the car for this circuit, so we have to learn from this and make it better for Monaco."

Olivier Panis
"I am not really sure what happened. We took advantage of the safety car period at the very beginning to refuel the car, and effectively switch to a one-stop race. Shortly after I rejoined the track, I felt something hit the barge board and there was a puncture on the front left tyre. Basically I turned in and the car simply continued straight on and I had to stop. I thought that the suspension was also affected and when the guys checked the car back in the garage, they found some damage to the front suspension. It is another shame and it has not been a fantastic weekend for us, so we have to keep motivated and think about the next race in Monaco in two weeks."

Ove Andersson
"I am very disappointed. This whole weekend we have not found a good set-up on the car. We struggled badly on Friday morning and have spent the rest of the weekend trying to catch up. Cristiano did well to get tenth after the problem at the start with his launch system put him at the back of the grid. As for Olivier, I just cannot believe how one man can have such bad luck. The only thing we can do is to learn from this weekend and look to improve for the next race, but I am done with making predictions, so I am not going to give a Monaco forecast."