[FormulaV-JH495]

Toyota drop Cristiano da Matta
Ricardo Zonta gets the nod for Hungary





Cristiano has not impressed Toyota this year

Toyota announced this morning that Ricardo Zonta will replace Cristiano da Matta from next weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix and partner French veteran Olivier Panis with Ryan Briscoe being promoted to the role of Friday tester.

Cristiano da Matta's future with Toyota is anything but certain but a release from Toyota stated that he 'will continue to be employed as a Toyota driver for the remainder of the year and could consequently still be called upon to partake in any driving or marketing-related activities for the Panasonic Toyota Racing team.'

The shock decision to drop da Matta follows a less than sparkling performance at the German Grand Prix in which the former CART Champion qualified in a distant 15th position only to retire the new TF104B following a tyre failure. Cristiano da Matta's only points scoring result of the season was a sixth place at the Monaco Grand Prix.

"We revised our original plans after we reviewed the results of the last three Grand Prix," Team Principal Tsutomu Tomita stated in a press release. "Ricardo Zonta consistently performed very well, as indeed he also did in the first half of the 2004 season. We believe it is fair to offer Ricardo the chance to show his potential in full race conditions, before we enter into the final step of our driver evaluation for the 2005 season."



"We decided to retain Olivier Panis as a race driver for the rest of this season, based on the fact that he is the driver who has secured the team's best race result of the year so far (fifth at Indianapolis) and has collected the higher number of championship points (five). Cristiano da Matta will remain a Panasonic Toyota Racing driver until the end of 2004 and could still be called upon to undertake activities accordingly."

After winning the CART title in 2002 with Toyota power, da Matta moved to Formula One the following season. With Ralf Schumacher on board for 2005 and no race role for da Matta at Toyota, rumours suggest that the Brazilian has become disillusioned with the German- based team.