Toyota Boss Pleased with Team's Progress

The Toyota team were pleased with the progress showed at the Malaysian Grand Prix despite failing to score any points.

"To have a second consecutive two-car finish is extremely good and underlines the reliability of the TF104s," said team principal Tsutomu Tomita after the race.

"Both drivers suffered from a lot of traffic confusion on the opening lap, but the overall result has also been a little bit better than Melbourne, which is certainly pleasing. We clearly still need to find some pace, but we are always heading in the right way and know what we have to do."

The Japanese squad struggled for pace at the season opening Australian Grand Prix, but showed signs of improvement in Malaysia. Brazilian Cristiano da Matta finished right outside the points in ninth place, while teammate Olivier Panis was down in 12th position.

"It was quite a difficult race," said da Matta. "The limited running I had during the practice sessions did not affect my qualifying lap yesterday, but I think it hurt us in the race today. I suffered from a lot of understeer throughout, and unfortunately the adjustments we made during the pitstops did not really help much.

"I got a good start up to eighth place into the first corner, but I was forced to run wide at turn 4, which lost me a lot of places. From there, we used some good pitstop work to make up the places we lost, but I have to admit that it is a bit frustrating to finish ninth and just outside the points."