Toyota Duo Pleased with Qualifying Showing

The Toyota team were happy with what was their best joint qualifying result of the season at the Montreal circuit, with Olivier Panis finishing in seventh place while teammate Cristiano da Matta wound up ninth fastest.

"I am pleased with the results of qualifying today - for myself, Cristiano and the whole team," said Frenchman Panis, who is yet to score his first points of the year. "We had some problems in practice this morning.

"I made a spin in the first session, which caused some damage to the car, but everybody in the team reacted very well to get the car in a good shape for qualifying. We appear to be reasonably competitive here and starting from seventh and ninth, we are in a good position for the race."

Brazilian da Matta was also satisfied with his performance, although the CART champion rued the lack of running on a dry track.

"Unfortunately we did not complete much running in the drying track conditions this morning," said da Matta. "As a result, there is still some work to be done on improving my driving finesse around this track.

"All things considered, the qualifying lap was quite a good effort and I have gone one better than my previous best qualifying result in Monaco, and I look forward to seeing what we can do from ninth in tomorrow's race."