Toyota makes the top ten

Olivier Panis, running 10th, had a communications failure which resulted in him coming into the pits and then gesticulating wildly at the team management as he drove past an empty pit. To make matters worse, when he returned to the track he was given a stop-and-go penalty for speeding in the pitlane.

"It is a real pity because the car felt good and was handling well," said Panis. "The final result showed that we could have been in contention for a point today. Nevertheless, I take heart from the hard work the team has put in since Melbourne to significantly improve our overall package and I am looking forward to the next race in Bahrain.

"My start was very good and I made up a couple of positions, but I think that somebody must have pushed me from the back because I spun. I worked hard to make my way through the field after that to regain positions and was running quite strongly in tenth place until my unscheduled pitstop."

Da Matta's ninth place was a vast improvement over his Melbourne performance but the Brazilian was frustrated with his result after a weekend spent visiting gravel traps: "It was quite a difficult race. The limited running I had during the practice sessions did not affect my qualifying lap yesterday, but I think it hurt us in the race today.

"I suffered from a lot of understeer throughout, and unfortunately the adjustments we made during the pitstops did not really help much," said da Matta. "I got a good start up to eighth place into the first corner, but I was forced to run wide at turn 4, which lost me a lot of places. From there, we used some good pitstop work to make up the places we lost, but I have to admit that it is a bit frustrating to finish ninth and just outside the points."

Technical director Mike Gascoyne summed the team's weekend up: "Ultimately, it was disappointing not to get both cars in the top ten today and to miss out on a championship point by one position. Overall, it was good to see both cars to the finish line to maintain a 100% finish record, and a much stronger performance than we had in Melbourne."