Team looking for improvements on Saturday

Improvement please
By Huw Alban (30/05/03)
May 30 2003

Toyota endured a difficult Thursday at Monaco yesterday. All of the pre-Grand Prix optimism was shattered with a pre-qualifying performance that put both cars at the back of the grid. The Saturday session has now been compromised as Toyota will be the 2nd and 3rd cars to qualify.

Olivier Panis and Cristiano da Matta finished the opening qualifying session in 18th and 19th positions, with laps in 1n19.903s and 1m20.374s respectively, which especially from Panis's point of view was disappointing. Cristiano da Matta, it has emerged, was being ultra careful not to prang the car in the narrow track and hence his times have been slow all weekend. Panis, meanwhile, had been posting top 12 times in free practice but a mistake on his qualifying lap spoiled his day.

"We have the same lack of grip as we experienced in Austria," Panis explained after the session. "I was relatively okay in sector one but then as I went down through the tight section I was lacking grip and I got big oversteer going into Portiers. I had to back off the throttle, which cost a lot of time because the next section, through the tunnel, is the fastest part of the circuit. Saturday is obviously going to be difficult but I hope that we can improve the car and that I can drive a trouble-free lap to a more representative time."

"It was very tough," da Matta added. "Everyone says that there is a lot of time to be found in the driver here, and you cannot hope to learn all about Monte Carlo in a single session! Push too hard and you inevitably damage the car, so I had to take it a bit easier than usual. I will obviously have some more experience after Saturday morning, when we should also have the car closer to where we would like to be. Having said that it was immense fun to drive."