20/04/2003

San Marino Grand Prix Race Round-Up

Panasonic Toyota Racing narrowly missed out on its first world championship points of the season in the San Marino Grand Prix when Olivier Panis finished the first European race of the 2003 Formula 1 campaign in ninth place.

Both Toyota TF103s elected to stop three times in the 62-lap event at Imola which saw the team register its first two-car finish of the 2003 season. Brazilian Cristiano da Matta finished the race in 12th place his third consecutive race finish.

"Obviously it's a little frustrating to drive hard all race and finish just out of the points Panis said, but the positive thing is that we got both cars to the finish. I did everything I could today and the important thing is that the reliability is there again. That is very important for the next round and I'm expecting that the car will be better-suited to Barcelona where hopefully we will be able to go one step better and open our account with some points."

Da Matta added: "It's not a secret that Imola is not one of the circuits best-suited to our car. We struggled a little with the set-up from the start of the meeting on Friday and although the team did a good job to make progress another characteristic of Imola is that it is difficult to overtake which prevented me from making progress after my second stop. I felt more confident in the car today completed the race and when we marry that to a circuit on which we have done a lot of testing such as Barcelona in a fortnight then we should go well."

General Manager of Race and Track Engineering Norbert Kreyer said of the race: "We can be happy to have both cars finish the race with Olivier in 9th and Cristiano in 12th. Generally Imola is a particular track and we have had previous difficulty with the car's handling here. Considering that on Friday we were really struggling in terms of the balance of the TF103s I am really pleased for the result today. What is now missing is the speed which we need to work on to drive into the points at the next race in Spain.
We are happy to be ninth but it is somewhat frustrating to be so close to a points position but not quite there."

Imola produced the first race win of the season for world champion Michael Schumacher who took pole position in yesterday's qualifying hour.

Kimi Raikkonen retained his lead in the drivers' championship with second place for West McLaren Mercedes stopping twice and narrowly beating Rubens Barrichello in the second Ferrari. Ralf Schumacher was fourth for the BMW Williams F1 Team just ahead of David Coulthard wit the second McLaren-Mercedes. Fernando Alonso finished sixth for Mild Seven Renault F1 with the final points taken by Juan Pablo Montoya's Williams-BMW and Jenson Button in the Lucky Strike BAR Honda entry.