Da Matta satisfied with qualifying efforts

The Brazilian's qualifying lap was just 0.003s slower than the time of experienced team-mate Panis, although da Matta felt he could have gone faster given more time to set-up the spare. The Toyotas will start 10th and 11th for Sunday's race.

"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 percent 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 bee running well today and if we look at the big picture, I think we are looking in pretty good shape."

Olivier Panis was happy to improve his performance after problems during yesterday's first qualifying session. He said: "Definitely, I feel that we have improved the car a lot for today. 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."