By Toyota F1 Media
June 9 2004
The Toyota F1 team prepares for another series of back-to-back races, starting with the Canadian Grand Prix. The Gilles Villeneuve circuit at Montreal is one that all the Toyota F1 drivers enjoy. The team is again working hard at ensuring that they come away with another points scoring finish.
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| 2004 Canadian GP Preview | |
Cristiano
da Matta - Car Number 16"The Canadian Grand Prix is one of my favourites of the year. Everybody in Montreal really gets behind us and the enthusiasm of the fans is exactly what Formula 1 needs. The circuit is also fun to drive and technically demanding, offering drivers and engineers a nice challenge. Engine power and
stability under braking are two important areas of performance, but the car
also has to ride the kerbs well in order to set a good lap time. Our TF104
should be reasonably well suited to Circuit Gilles Villeneuve; our engine
has proven itself to be one of the strongest and most reliable on the grid,
but we need to find the car balance to match. I doubt we can finish in the
points without benefiting from misfortune ahead of us, but we will continue
to do our best and see what we can achieve at the end of the weekend." I like Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and I have also had some good results there. Last year, we prepared well for Montreal and the whole team performed quite strongly, which resulted in me scoring my first point of 2003. At last week's Monza test, we worked expressly on Canada and US preparations and we looked reasonably good running Canada downforce levels so we'll be trying to get on the scoreboard this weekend."
That variety makes it quite demanding to set up the
car to have a good performance over the whole track. The track is usually
dirty on Friday, and quite slow and slippery. It improves a lot as the
weekend goes on, meaning you can run with a different balance and less
downforce. That makes finding the base set-up even more difficult on Friday,
but at least you can still work on tyre characteristics, which are always
important." First up is the Canadian GP, and whilst I do not expect us to make a huge leap forward compared to other races this season, our target should again be to lay a solid foundation in Friday practice and try to build on that for the remainder of the weekend. We simply have to keep motivated and hope that Toyota reliability will result in a top eight finish on Sunday afternoon." |
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