16/05/2003

Austrian Grand Prix First Qualifying Report

Panasonic Toyota Racing had a tough opening day in the Styrian mountains.

The challenge of the A1-Ring is a totally different one to Barcelona where the team scored its first points of the season through Cristiano da Matta a fortnight ago. The circuit has a number of straights followed by slow corners placing an emphasis on engine power stability under braking and good traction. In theory the Toyota TF103 should have shown well but neither Olivier Panis (1m09.764s) nor Da Matta (1m10.370s) was happy with the set-up of their respective cars and had to settle for 14th and 16th places respectively.

As well as the slow corners however there are some medium speed long turns on the infield which means that teams cannot afford to run too little wing. If the balance is not right however you can be forced to run a little more than optimum wing levels to aid the car's stability which in turn hurts your top speed.

Panis explained: "We had a very difficult free practice session in the morning where we didn't make a lot of progress. The track was slippery early on but even when more rubber started to go down I still had a lot of problems with oversteer. Considering that I think the job in qualifying was acceptable and I am not too worried. If I can qualify in the top 10 tomorrow then I think I can be quite optimistic for the race."

Team mate Da Matta also had to concentrate on learning the circuit after the relative luxury of racing in Spain on a track where he had decent testing mileage to call upon.

The Brazilian said: "We have struggled a little with the set-up right from first thing this morning. There was a slight improvement in the qualifying session but there is still much more to come from the car and a little bit I'm sure from myself. We are not very happy with the position obviously but there is more we can do and we have to put our heads together this afternoon and work towards a better balance."

Michael Schumacher again set the pace for Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro lapping in 1m07.90s the German ably backed up by team mate Rubens Barrichello (1m08.187s) with the second F2003-GA chassis.

Third quickest was Jaguar Racing's Mark Webber (1m08.512s) ahead of the BAR-Hondas of Jacques Villeneuve (1m08.680s) and Jenson Button (1m08.831s) while Juan Pablo Montoya (1m08.839s) completed the top six with the first of the BMW Williams F1 Team cars.