Da Matta plays down time

The Toyota driver set the quickest time of the rain-hit second practice session stealing the top slot from Renault's Jarno Trulli in the dying moments by over half a second.

"Obviously it is nice to finish top of the timesheets in the second session today, but that does not necessarily mean anything," said the Brazilian. "We timed our last run to perfection and went out on a new set of tyres when the track was at its best.

"Our main objective for today was to carry out the tyre evaluation, which was pretty impossible in the ever-changing wet-dry track conditions. At least we have the two practice sessions tomorrow morning in order to do our back-to-back comparison before we have to make our final decision by noon. A very inconclusive day, really."

Team-mate Olivier Panis set a more realistic time for the team several places down in 11th and despite the loss of the day because of the wet weather, was pleased to be racing in front of his home crowd.

"Due to the constantly changing weather conditions it was a quite difficult day for us. However, we tried to concentrate on our programme and hopefully we can find some valuable information from the data in preparation for tomorrow. At the end of the session we decided not to go out any more with a new set of tyres and to set some faster times.

"Nevertheless I am really happy with the car as it looks quite competitive. It is nice to be back racing in France in front of my home fans and I hope we can give them a good result to celebrate on Sunday. We will get a clearer indication in tomorrow's practice sessions."