Trulli dropped a place from his provisional front row starting position in Sunday’s race fuel qualifying session and ran third to pole position man Fernando Alonso and world champion Michael Schumacher in the early stages. When Schumacher retired, however, Trulli was a confident second throughout and finished runner-up to Alonso for the second successive race.

“I am delighted with the result,” Trulli said. “It’s fantastic for the team to be able to build on our great start to the season and prove once again how competitive we are. We need to push and carry on like this, keeping up our momentum. I want to say a thank-you to Mike Gascoyne and the entire team because when I signed last year, I did not envisage being so competitive so soon.

“It might sound a bit greedy but I’m already getting sick of being second! I’d like to think that we can win soon. I thought that I could possibly catch Fernando today and I was reducing the gap by 0.2s per lap at one stage, but then he proved that he could respond and I realised that I didn’t have the pace to trouble him. I did have half a second in hand over our other competitors, however, which was a great position to be in. It meant that although it was a hotter race even than Malaysia, I was never in any trouble and the car was great to drive. I’m pleased for Fernando, my ex-team mate, as well as for me and for everyone at Toyota because we are doing things that nobody expected. It’s like a dream for us. The only reason I did not celebrate on the podium was out of respect for the Pope on a very sad day.”

Ralf Schumacher also drove a fine race after his problems in the first qualifying session in which he was only 11th. In full tank conditions he set the third fastest lap of Sunday morning’s second session to qualify sixth on aggregated time. He then improved on that in the race, capitalising when Nick Heidfeld ran wide in Turn 8 to move up to fifth position. He then passed the second BMW Williams of Mark Webber to come home fourth and add to the points he scored by finishing fifth in Malaysia.

“I gave myself a bit of a tough task after Saturday but I managed to make up ground and take advantage of any opportunities that came my way,” Schumacher said. “The fact that we have managed to get both cars into the top four and continue what is a 100% reliability record so far this year is a good reflection on the whole team.”

Behind Alonso and Trulli, Kimi Raikkkonen finished third for West McLaren Mercedes and behind Ralf, the final points scoring positions were claimed by Pedro de la Rosa in the second McLaren, Mark Webber’s BMW Williams, Felipe Massa’s Sauber Petronas and the Red Bull Racing entry of David Coulthard.

The result means that Panasonic Toyota Racing consolidates its second position in the constructors championship.

Technical Director, Chassis, Mike Gascoyne, said: “That was another strong performance from both drivers and it is pleasing to have scored 25 points in the constructors championship from the first three races. Today we actually closed the gap by three points to Renault, whose second car did not finish. A Grand Prix season is about constant development and we will be taking nothing for granted. We are competitive and we will be working hard to stay that way, at the same time aiming at scoring our first win. We will be working just as hard when the European season begins at Imola in three weeks time, ahead of a long slog through the summer of what will be the longest F1 season in the sport’s history. We have made a good start.”