By Guest Admin
May 3 2003

Toyota drivers Olivier Panis and Cristiano da Matta have placed the two Panasonic Toyota cars in 6th and 13th for tomorrow's Spanish Grand Prix.

Toyota have done a lot of work at the Circuit de Catalunya over the past few months and it was pleasing to see that the work has paid dividends with Olivier slotting the car onto the third row of the grid for the race.

Olivier said afterwards "I am very happy with the result today. We had quite a few problems with the handling yesterday but the team reacted very well to improve the car and I felt a big improvement in the set-up this morning. My qualifying lap today was very good and I think we are on a positive strategy for tomorrow's race. We have shown in pre-season testing and during this weekend that the TF103 is very competitive at this Barcelona track. Starting from sixth on the grid, I feel that we are in a strong position for the race."

Cristiano was more critical of his performance after his flying lap dropped him down the grid to 13th place. "I do not think my qualifying lap was perfect, but it was not too bad either. We missed the settings and the balance of the car a little bit and I was suffering from oversteer, so I could not push that hard. I am not as happy with the car's balance as I was yesterday, so now we have to try to figure out why and learn for the future. We were just too much on the oversteer side. We can do small corrections for the race but nothing big, so I will try my best to get as far up the field as possible with this starting position."