25/04/2004

Grand Prix of San Marino - Race Report

Panasonic Toyota Racing driver Olivier Panis finished the Grand Prix of San Marino in 11th position maintaining his 100% finishing record in 2004 while team mate Cristiano da Matta unfortunately went off the track at half distance.

Panis adopted a three-stop strategy and came into the pits on laps nine 26 and 42. In the closing stages of the race he enjoyed a close battle with David Coulthard beating the West McLaren Mercedes driver to the chequered flag by just 0.8 seconds.

"Everybody in the team has worked very hard as usual Panis said. It is important to be able to use the kerbs well at Imola and we actually had a special chicane made at Paul Ricard in preparation for this race. The progress we have made since Melbourne reflects the effort being put in but we still need to develop the car so that it has more race pace."

Panis and Da Matta ran together on the circuit early in the race but the Brazilian had misfortune work against him.

"I was given a Drive Through penalty for a blue flag incident the Brazilian explained, and then had problems when I came into the pits. Basically there is a procedure that I follow every time I come in. It involves pressing two buttons - the first for the pitlane speed limiter and the second to programme the restarting procedure. But the starting button also disables the traction control and in fact I was not actually stopping this time.

"The result was that when I rejoined the track I arrived at the first chicane was caught out by the lack of traction control and went straight off the circuit. It is a mistake and of course quite frustrating."

Michael Schumacher kept up his 100% victory record in 2004 when he overcame early race leader Jenson Button's Lucky Strike BAR Honda at the first pit stops. Juan Pablo Montoya finished third for the BMW Williams F1 Team with Mild Seven Renault F1 Team drivers Fernando Alonso and Jarno Trulli in fourth and fifth places respectively. Rubens Barrichello was sixth with the second Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro car while the final points were claimed by Ralf Schumacher's BMW Williams and Kimi Raikkonen's McLaren Mercedes.

Technical Director Chassis Mike Gascoyne said: "It is a shame to lose our overall finishing rate to Cristiano's problems but once again Olivier demonstrated our strong reliability even if we need to continue working at developing the car to find further improvements. The level of attrition was low among the front-runners and we are still chasing our first points but at a circuit which traditionally is not too kind to us we should not be disappointed. We will continue the hard work before Barcelona in a fortnight's time a track that should prove better suited to the TF104."