Toyota Looking to Close Gap Through Reliability

Toyota are aiming for greater reliability from their 2004 car in their third season in Formula One to achieve goals of points in every Grand Prix and a first podium finish.

The TF104, described by its designer as "an evolution not a revolution", was unveiled at the big-spending team's factory on Saturday amid talk of realistic goals for the season but a determination to challenge for the world title in the next couple of years.

"We are looking to make real progress to the top teams this year," said Tsutomu Tomita, who took over as team principal at the start of the year. "I believe (we) will achieve point-scoring race results during each F1 weekend in 2004. I also believe we can score our first ever podium finish."

One of the biggest problems Toyota faced last season, when they finished eighth out of 10 teams, was that too often their drivers, Olivier Panis and Cristiano da Matta, were not on the track at the end of the race.

"The key issue is reliability," said experienced French driver Panis, who was forced to retire nine times in 2003.

"We learnt a lot last year, it was a shame to retire with the small problems that we had. It was very frustrating, but if this year we improve on that then it will be worth the pain and be a big positive point."

The ever positive Panis, 14th in the Championship last year, was confident that the team had achieved that target, while his Brazilian teammate da Matta has already noticed an improvement from his brief time in the new car.

"One area we were not happy with was the braking entry into the corners last year, we had a real unstable car," said the 30-year-old former CART champion, who was 13th in the Championship on his debut season in Formula One last year.

"From our first test we saw a huge improvement in this area."

Mike Gascoyne, who joined the team as technical director at the beginning of December, summed up the air of short-term realism and long-term ambition.

"We want to be racing at the front, but that's something that's pretty difficult in Formula One and you can't do it overnight," said the Briton.

"We hope this car is a step forward, I'm sure it will be from what we've seen already, and, hopefully, it will close the gap to the top teams and we can start racing near the front and ultimately we want to be winning the World Championship in years to come."