Panis Happy to Score First Point with Toyota

Frenchman Olivier Panis was happy after scoring his first point for the Toyota team at the Canadian Grand Prix today.

"I think this eighth place is a very good result for the team because everybody has done a fantastic job this weekend," said Panis, who finished in eighth place to give the Japanese squad their second point-scoring result of the 2003 season.

"I am a little bit disappointed for Cristiano (da Matta) because he drove a strong race, but this is my first Championship point of the season and for me it is now the first step.

"The car went very well throughout the weekend and, from here, we need to continue to build on the car's performance for the second half of the season - starting from the next race at the Nurburgring."

His teammate Cristiano da Matta retired from the race with a mechanical problem while he was running ahead of Panis and in a point-scoring position.

"I am very disappointed," said da Matta. "I don't know what happened really. Something just wasn't right with the car's suspension at the exit of the chicane and I simply couldn't continue. Everyone did a great job and everything was running normally until the end.

"At least we can take one point home as a team - I think we deserved it after our combined team performance. The car was handling reasonably well in the race and I think we were running as quickly as we could have, so to miss out on certain points like that so close to the end is extremely annoying."