Gascoyne Happy with Toyota's Pace

Toyota's technical director Mike Gascoyne was encouraged by the pace of the Japanese squad's cars in today's practice for the Malaysian Grand Prix at Sepang.

The Cologned-based team had a dismal start to their season as they struggled at the Australian Grand Prix, with both Olivier Panis and Cristiano da Matta finishing over two laps behind race winner Michael Schumacher.

Today, Panis set the 12th quickest time while Brazilian da Matta finished in 19th place.

"The level of grip was perhaps a little better than we expected, and it showed that the changes we have made since Melbourne have had a positive effect," said Gascoyne at the end of the session.

"Overall, it was a good day with the cars well balanced and the gap to our competitors much reduced, highlighting the excellent and focused job that everyone in the team has done since Melbourne."

Frenchman Panis enjoyed a good session while da Matta's day was cut short after spinning off the track at the start of the second session. The Brazilian could only complete seven laps today.

"There is nothing much to say really. We again opted to run just a handful of laps in the first session, but shortly into the second session I went off after entering turn 14 a bit too fast," said da Matta.

"It was completely the wrong time to make a mistake like that because I lost the remainder of the hour. I now have to rely on the information and data that Olivier and Ricardo [Zonta] gathered today."