Da Matta: It Could Have been Better

Brazilian Cristiano da Matta was upbeat following a promising showing in Saturday's qualifying for the Malaysian Grand Prix.

The CART champion, in only his second Formula One Grand Prix, wound up 11th quickest right behind Toyota teammate Olivier Panis despite having to use the spare car for his only flying lap this afternoon.

Da Matta, who failed to finish his first race in Australia two weeks ago, believes he is in a good position for tomorrow's race, but claimed he could have done better with his racing car.

"It was unfortunate that we had to change to the spare car for qualifying today," said da Matta. "The car still performed well, but I didn't have everything 100% tuned the way I wanted.

"Considering that I changed cars and that it's my first Malaysian GP, I am happy with eleventh place, but it could have been even better. The car has been running well today and if we look at the big picture, I think we are looking in pretty good shape."

Frenchman Panis, who in this morning's practice session suffered an engine failure, finished only three thousands of a second ahead of da Matta and he too was satisfied with his performance.

"Definitely, I feel that we have improved the car a lot for today," said Panis. "We struggled with the set-up in free practice yesterday, so we worked a lot overnight and made some real improvements.

"As a result, we have been a little bit more competitive, and I think we have worked really hard this morning to choose the best strategy for tomorrow's race. Overall I am quite positive and happy with tenth on the grid."