Trulli Happy with Toyota's First Podium

Italian Trulli looked strong in qualifying and started from the front row for the second consecutive race, but many doubters predicted his pace to drop away and tipped him to fail to stay in the podium positions at the end of the race.

He proved them wrong, however.

"It is fantastic to bring the first podium finish to Toyota," said the Italian. "The team have done a good job over the winter and we are now on the pace and looking strong.

"I had an extremely good start but the Renault seems to get away well. I drove my race, I was competitive, I started managing the race, taking care of the tyres because I had a tyre problem in the first race in Australia.

"I was controlling it, the team kept telling me to slow down. We were quite comfortable on reliability even though the conditions are difficult here. I started lowering the revs."

Trulli, who dedicated his front row start to his friend Stefano, who died at the weekend, thanked his physio this time and said: "The heat was very hard on the drivers and it was difficult because I was sick at the start of the week."