Toyota duo admit they expected worse

Both drivers had talked down their chances of shining in the season-opening race after failing to impress during winter testing with the new TF107 car.

But on Saturday, Trulli and Schumacher put on a promising performance, with the Italian finishing in eighth place, right in front of his teammate.

Both men admitted they didn't expect to do so well.

"We are all very happy because after a difficult winter of testing we came here without the highest expectations," said Trulli. "So to have two cars in the top ten is a good result. I put in a clean lap in Q3 even if I must say the lap itself was not great.

"That means we probably still have a bit more potential in the car. We showed quite a good performance, better than we expected.

"Obviously it's not over yet and we need to race and we need to finish to score some points. But now we can look forward to tomorrow's race and do our best to come away with a good finish."

Schumacher added: "To come away with 8th and 9th positions is much better than we expected at the start of the session so we are very satisfied," Schumacher said. "It was not a perfect afternoon for me. We had a gearbox control problem during Q2 so I could only put in one flying lap.

"Then I made some mistakes on my lap in Q3 so that is why we were pretty average on the times. But it had been a difficult start to the week and the start of the season is usually difficult. So after all that to have both cars in the top ten is a good achievement.

"We will now do all we can to come away with something from tomorrow's race. I've had some good races here in Melbourne so I hope there can be another one to come."