Toyota F1 2003 French Flashback

Olivier Panis thrilled his home fans at last year's French Grand Prix with a spirited drive to 8th place to score his second points of the season to date.

The Panasonic Toyota Racing team got off to a solid start in tricky wet conditions in Friday's free practice hour with Panis setting the eighth fastest time and Cristiano da Matta in 16th. The duo completed a combined 45 laps, learning the revised layout of the Circuit de Nevers-Magny-Cours.

Improving track conditions in the afternoon's first qualifying session benefited the later runners. Panis ended up 4th quickest with Da Matta 10th, but teams were hoping for more consistent weather conditions on Saturday to get a clearer indication of performance levels.

In the dry, Panis was able to show that his early competitiveness was no fluke by posting the eighth quickest time in Saturday free practice. His team-mate was yet to find his rhythm and was forced to settle for 13th place heading into the all-important qualifying hour.

The team opted for different strategies in the race with Panis on a three-stopper and Da Matta on a longer first stint two-stop. Consequently, Panis took the advantage in qualifying, but made full use of his TF103 to claim tenth on the grid for his home race. Da Matta did well on his flying lap and was just three places further back in 13th. But ultimately, results on Sunday afternoon would be determined by tyre selection and strategy.

Panis's three-stop strategy worked well as the Frenchman crossed the chequered flag in a points-paying 8th place. Da Matta, on the other hand, could only manage 11th over the 70 lap race, claiming that the option tyre his team-mate was running would have been a better choice than his primes. The Brazilian cited a lack of dry-weather running on Friday as the cause for the inconclusive results, but drew encouragement from the reliability of the TF103 over the weekend.

What the drivers said:

Olivier Panis:  "This eighth place is a very positive result for the team. The car felt good and I drove a strong race. In my career, I have never finished a race here at Magny-Cours, so I am relieved that this record has finally changed. I pushed really hard to keep my position and a point is a point, one that I am happy to take it in front of my home crowd. We are making progress step-by-step, but we need to continue to improve the car ahead of the next grand prix in Britain. We have made good progress at the last three grands prix, but we need to keep increasing our competitiveness."

Cristiano da Matta: "The positive things we can say after today's race is that we have our reliability back and didn't suffer from any problems during the race itself. We struggled in the race because we probably made the incorrect tyre choice, opting for prime rather than option. We cannot really blame this decision on anyone because we had wet conditions on Friday, from which we couldn't draw any conclusions, and then only 40-or-so laps on Saturday morning to decide our entire race set-up. Looking ahead, I am very optimistic for Silverstone because we had a positive test there recently, and it is a track I enjoy, so we'll be looking for points."