Toyota disappointed with qualifying form

Both Cristiano da Matta and Olivier Panis suffered from handling problems on their qualifying runs, and the Frenchman has conceded that the team still has a lot of work to do on its set-up at the Sepang circuit.

"It has not been a fantastic day to be honest," said Panis. "We experienced some set-up problems in free practice and in the qualifying, so we have a lot of work to do this evening and in the sessions tomorrow to find the best set-up on the car. The main problem today was the grip level, which was not particularly good all day, so we need to improve that for tomorrow. I remain positive though, as I am sure we have some things to play with to find the best solution for second qualifying."

Gustav Brunner, Toyota's chief designer, said: " I am a bit disappointed with today. There were set-up problems on both cars, more so on Olivier's than Cristiano's, but we need to get the cars right. We have a little bit of set-up work to do. Today we had too much oversteer and too much jumping over the bumps, but we have one-and-a-half hours tomorrow to find a cure for this, so I am still sure we can make a few places up in tomorrow's qualifying and get both cars in the top ten."