Da Matta takes a lonely ninth

Team-mate Olivier Panis was not so fortunate as he trailed home 13th and last, a further three laps behind race winner Juan Pablo Montoya after being inflicted with a dire handling problem that left him struggling for grip.

"Cristiano's result reflected where we are in terms of competitiveness at the moment," said team principal Ove Andersson. "I can't say that I'm happy, but I'm not entirely unhappy as ninth is a representative result for us this weekend. Olivier must have had a problem of some kind because his car was not good at all, but this has to be checked."

Da Matta had a remarkably incident-free race, as he explains: "We had a good strategy and I had a clean race with a lot of clear track. I was out there pretty much on my own for the entire race with no traffic, which meant that I didn't lose too much time. Finishing ninth behind the top four teams is a reasonable result and I think this was all we had in the car today."

Panis, winner here for Ligier in 1996, was not smiling when he reached parc ferme at the end of the race: "The result today was extremely disappointing for me and for the whole team. We couldn't find a cure to the grip level problem we have been suffering from all weekend, so we decided to run a differnt strategy, stopping just once in the race, but the car was really difficult to drive. There must have been something wrong, but we don't know what."