Malaysia: Gascoyne - We're getting there

By Nick Sparkes
March 20 2006

Toyota's Mike Gascoyne failed to make an appearance in Malaysia after being given the task of turning the team around after their disastrous race in Bahrain. But after Ralf's eighth place finish in Malaysia, Gascoyne feels that without his problems in qualifying he could have finished third.

Toyota's technical director Mike Gascoyne stated that he expects the team to be back at the front, fighting for podiums in the near future.

"Clearly we managed to get the tyres working better this weekend," said Gascoyne "It all went very well considering Ralf's difficulty in qualifying yesterday and that we had him on a two-stop strategy which we had to change to a three-stop. Based on that it was a strong performance."

"Ralf's pace in the second half of the race when he was in free air was very strong," he added. "We've just got to do that from the front of the grid, not the back."

"If we'd planned a different strategy for Ralf we could have qualified on the second row and he would have been racing for a podium," Gascoyne went on. "That's all ifs and buts but if you look at our race pace it's very close to Ferrari. I'm sure they'll score some podiums and so should we."