08/05/2004

Grand Prix of Spain - Qualifying Report

Olivier Panis achieved Panasonic Toyota Racing's best qualifying result of the season so far when he put his Toyota TF104 chassis seventh on the grid for tomorrow's Spanish Grand Prix round 5 of the F1 World Championship. Panis lapped in 1m16.313s while team mate Cristiano da Matta's 1m17.038s lap sees him start the race just outside of the top ten from 11th place.

37-year-old Panis was delighted with the outcome of qualifying after having his Saturday morning free practice interrupted by an electrical problem that cost him his participation in the second session.

"The lap was a really good one he said, and the team has done a good job to find those crucial few tenths. A lot of testing is done at this circuit and the grid is always close here. Another couple of tenths for example would have put me fourth. It's an encouraging performance and I hope that we can turn a strong grid position into our first points of the year tomorrow."

Da Matta meanwhile was not as happy having managed a quicker time 1m16.758s in the pre-qualifying session.

"For some reason I seemed to suffer from more understeer on my qualifying lap the Brazilian explained. The wind can be a factor here and you often find that the conditions in general can change from lap to lap. I tried to compensate for the understeer but I ended up pushing a bit too hard. I lost something between the two session for sure and we are going to have to take a close look to find out exactly why."

Michael Schumacher (1m15.022s) claimed his fourth pole position in five starts this year for Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro ahead of BMW Williams F1 Team driver Juan Pablo Montoya (1m15.639s). Lucky Strike BAR Honda's Takuma Sato (1m15.809s) was third -- the best ever F1 qualifying position for a Japanese driver ahead of Jarno Trulli's Mild Seven Renault (1m16.144s) Rubens Barrichello (1m16.272s) in the second Ferrari and Ralf Schumacher (1m16.293s) in the second BMW Williams.

Panasonic Toyota Racing Technical Director Engine Luca Marmorini said: ""I think the result is very good. Olivier has attained the position that we had hoped we could achieve today. The time difference from fourth and fifth place is also minimal. Cristiano could not repeat his time from the pre-qualifying session due to some increased understeer on his run. We had an electrical problem in the second practice this morning which prevented Olivier from completing many laps so the result this afternoon is quite encouraging. The engine so far this weekend has been running reliably and I hope that remains the case in tomorrow's race. In terms of aims I think we are in the best position we have been this year to score some points."