Panis Pleased with Toyota's Reliability

Toyota's Olivier Panis was encouraged after continuing with this season's perfect reliability record at today's San Marino Grand Prix.

The veteran Frenchman has finished all four races so far this year, although he and his Toyota team are yet to score a point. Panis finished today's race in 11th position.

"Once again we proved the reliability of the TF104 and I was able to extend my 100% finishing record this year," said Panis. "I pushed very hard throughout the race and we did some good pit stops but we still need to develop better pace.

"Everybody in the team has worked really hard which is reflected by our consistency. We have to continue concentrating on making improvements to our performance and the progress we have made since Melbourne shows that sooner rather than later, the effort should pay off."

Brazilian Christiano da Matta retired from the race on lap 32.

"The weekend started quite positively with a top ten qualifying position, but unfortunately the race did not continue the trend," said da Matta, who was given a drive through penalty for ignoring the blue flags while being lapped.

Da Matta later spun out of the race when he was caught out after forgetting to engage traction control back.

"I got to the first chicane, where I was caught out by not having any traction control and went off the circuit," he said. "It is a mistake, but very frustrating... The only thing to do is to look forward to Barcelona, a track that should be more suited to the TF104."