Panis Aiming for First Points of 2004

Frenchman Olivier Panis is confident of scoring his first points of the season at the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday.

Toyota driver Panis, the oldest man on the Grand Prix grid, enjoyed a good qualifying session today at Barcelona, posting the seventh fastest time for the Japanese squad, who are also looking for their first points of the year in Spain.

"My lap today was very good and the whole team has done a great job all weekend to fine tune the car to find those crucial tenths-of-a-second," said Panis. "We are improving step-by-step and everyone is very focussed on the job we have to do.

"We know that this circuit suits our car well, which we have shown in winter testing, and this qualifying result offers us a strong opportunity to score some points in tomorrow's race."

Panis's teammate Cristiano da Matta was not as happy at the Frenchman, the Brazilian struggling with the handling of his TF104 car. Da Matta finished down in 11th place.

"I am not particularly pleased with my qualifying lap today," admitted the Brazilian. "I suffered from a lot more understeer on my second run and I am sure the track and weather conditions in general were a contributing factor.

"I tried to compensate for the understeer from inside the car, but I pushed maybe too hard and overdrove the car a little bit. The bottom line is that we lost something from the first session to the second and we have to find out exactly what."