Panasonic Toyota Racing will leave Kuala Lumpur with two points following Jarno Trulli's 7th place finish at today's Malaysian Grand Prix. After the mixed weather of the previous few days, the race took place on a sunny day of typically oppressive Malaysian heat. Track temperatures topped 50 degrees Celsius, making for a hard day's work for all the drivers. Following yesterday's strong performance in qualifying, Jarno and team-mate Ralf Schumacher lined up in 8th and 9th on the grid. Unfortunately both lost ground at the start and from there it was a long, hard race for both drivers.

Ralf was less fortunate and lost further ground when he suffered a slow puncture shortly after his first pit stop and had to fuel until the end of the race, eventually taking 15th place. After starting the year with two successive points finishes, Toyota will now begin its journey to Bahrain for the third round of the championship next Sunday, April 15.

Ralf Schumacher: "It's been a difficult weekend for me since the start and today was one of those days when everything went wrong. The car didn't get away well and then I had to avoid Jarno and I lost a few places. From then on I was stuck in traffic for the first part of the race."

"Shortly after my first pit stop I had a slow puncture and I needed to make another unscheduled pit stop. That meant I was heavy on fuel and the balance was not good. In general it was a tough race for no points. But Bahrain is coming next and I hope to do better there. Jarno's result shows that we have the pace to challenge with both cars."

Tsutomu Tomita - Team Principal: "We have to be satisfied with this result because we have made some progress here compared to Melbourne, especially in terms of race pace. The weekend started quite well as we again got both cars into the top ten. But the starts were a problem for both cars so we lost a number of places and both cars were blocked behind slower cars for the first stint, losing over 10 seconds."

"Passing is extremely difficult here as we saw throughout the field. Ralf was less fortunate and soon after his first pit stop he suffered a slow puncture. That's why he had to come into the pits at the worst possible time for his strategy. He was due to have his last stint on the harder tyre but because we had to fill him up until the end, that put him out of contention. In the heat of Sepang it is not good to run on a full tank of fuel but he still raced well and brought the car home."

"We took 8th and 9th places in Melbourne whereas here it was 7th and 15th but the actual performance was better here. In Melbourne we were quite far away in terms of pace. The good news here is that during Jarno's second and third stints his lap times were not far off the front-runners. If we had made better starts he could have kept the Renaults behind. So if we continue developing I hope that we can get even closer to the front."

Ralf Schumacher
Chassis: TF107/03
Race Classification: 15th
Gap: +1 lap
Tyre Strategy: Soft Soft Hard
Qualifying Classification: 9th
Time: 1m 37.078s (+2.035s in Q3)
Grid: 9th

Pos.	Driver	Team	Time
1	F. Alonso	McLaren	1:32:14.930
2	L. Hamilton	McLaren	+ 17.557
3	K. Räikkönen	Ferrari	+ 18.319
4	N. Heidfeld	BMW	+ 33.777
5	F. Massa	Ferrari	+ 36.705
6	G. Fisichella	Renault	+ 1:05.638
7	J. Trulli	Toyota	+ 1:10.132
8	H. Kovalainen	Renault	+ 1:12.015
9	A. Wurz	Williams	+ 1:28.924
10	M. Webber	Red Bull	+ 1:33.556
11	R. Barrichello	Honda	+ 1 laps
12	J. Button	Honda	+ 1 laps
13	T. Sato	Super Aguri	+ 1 laps
14	S. Speed	Scuderia Toro Rosso	+ 1 laps
15	R. Schumacher	Toyota	+ 1 laps
16	V. Liuzzi	Scuderia Toro Rosso	+ 1 laps
17	V. Liuzzi	Scuderia Toro Rosso	+ 1 laps
18	R. Kubica	BMW	+ 1 laps
19	N. Rosberg	Williams	+ 14 laps
20	D. Coulthard	Red Bull	+ 20 laps
21	C. Albers	Spyker F1	+ 49 laps
22	A. Sutil	Spyker F1	+ 56 laps

Malaysian GP Photos