Trulli says Toyota has more pace

The winner of this year's Monaco Grand Prix, who only joined Toyota in the last race in Japan, believes that traffic and problems getting used to the pace of new rubber during Friday's sessions left him with a lap time that does not reflect the overall pace of the TF104B.

The fact that third driver Ryan Briscoe was second fastest in morning practice seems to indicate the car could be well suited to the Interlagos track.

Trulli said: "It was a positive practice day for me. I completed a lot of laps and we were able to compare the two Michelin tyre compounds without any trouble.

"The overall lap time does not look too good, because I couldn't put everything together on my first lap with new tyres. However, I am extremely happy with the balance and general behaviour of the car around this circuit. We will work hard to find a bit more performance tomorrow."

Toyota technical director Mike Gascoyne echoed Trulli's optimism about the final race of the season.

"We enjoyed two productive sessions, totalling in excess of 150 laps with all three cars," he said. "The only real problem we encountered was the amount of traffic, but that is normal at a short circuit like Interlagos. Ryan did his usual Friday programme of long runs to compare the tyres, followed by some shorter runs for performance evaluation and, overall, the cars have looked very consistent.

"We have to look carefully at the data to prepare well for qualifying and the race. The lap times are very close, so a few tenths-of-a-second can make a huge difference to the final position. All in all, I think we can be confident of a strong race weekend."