Today's Selected Quotes

Michael Schumacher: "My first run was spot on and that is the main reason I took pole, because others seemed to improve on their later runs. The car was good so we did not need to make many changes in between the runs. So far the weekend is going well, partly because of the good work we did here last week. But you cannot rely on the testing as conditions change so quickly here, especially on the tyre side. You must be prepared to change the car according to what conditions you find. There have been some comments about the problem of the position of the pit lane exit, but with the extra speed at which the cars will leave the pits in the race, I don't think it will be a problem tomorrow."

Rubens Barrichello: "I am pleased with my third place. We have a bit of difficulty as we tried a change of set-up after the first run which wasn't bad and then we made further changes for the next two. But when we checked the ride height we did not get the result we expected. So for my fourth and final run, we went back to the original set-up and it was much better. But by then, the track was hotter and therefore slower."

Jean Todt: "We secured a fourth pole for Schumacher and the fifth this season for Ferrari, on a track where we knew we would have a tough time in qualifying. We are happy with the result, with Michael on pole and Rubens third. To qualify on the first and second rows was our objective. This is only the first step on what will still be a long weekend. The weather will make this race particularly difficult. As usual, the start and reliability will be very important. It will be vital to leave here with some points in order to enter the second part of the season with a bigger margin over our main rivals."

David Coulthard: "A fuel pump problem meant that my qualifying session was a bit disjointed as I did the first two runs in the T Car and the last two runs in the race car. But I am pleased with my final lap time which puts me on the front row of the grid for tomorrow's race and I have to take my hat off to the mechanics who had to work hard under very pressured conditions and did a great job."

Hakkinen meets the press after qualifying

Mika Hakkinen: "On the one hand I could say that it was a very disappointing session for me today, but on the other hand it is better than last year when I qualified 14th . But to be serious I have to sit down with the engineers and find out what the problem is and find a solution. I am confident that we will find a solution and I am optimistic for the race."

Ron Dennis: "Grand Prix practice and qualifying days vary from event to event. Today's qualifying lacked the normal progression which sees you systematically lower your lap times. Mika never had the car to his liking as he tried to find his optimum lap. David did an outstanding job as he changed from the T car to the race car half way through the session and still managed to claim a front row position. However we still have every opportunity to win tomorrow."

Norbert Haug: "David was handicapped as he had to use the T car following a fuel pump failure in his race car. He changed back to his race car later in the session. His second run had to be aborted after he had lifted entering the first comer to avoid Ralf Schumacher exiting the pitlane. Ralf apologised. When David finally used his race car he put it on the front row in a determined effort 0.102 seconds behind Michael Schumacher. Mika did not get the set up to his liking and was beaten to fourth place by Barrichello's Ferrari, by three thousandths of a second. One car on the first row, one on the second is a good base for tomorrow's race which the whole team are looking forward too."

Ralf Schumacher: "I am very happy with today's qualifying result. To be honest I must say that I'm a little bit surprised to have finished fifth. After the test last week, I expected a position between seventh and 10th. The BMW WilliamsF1 Team sorted out all the problems and they were very well prepared for this qualifying session. I must also say that I like this track and I'm looking forward to tomorrow's race."

Jenson Button: "I am very happy, mostly because I had a couple of poor qualifying sessions previous to this one. 10th on the grid is definitely a good position to start my first race here. When I came back in the garage in 10th position I thought it was great but then I saw Ralf who was going much faster than me and I was a little disappointed but I am happy for him. I like this track, especially the chicanes which are very fast and technical and demand a quick reaction - it takes a bit of time to get used to them."

Patrick Head: "Quite a good qualifying for us, after the fairly difficult test we had here last week. I think the engineers and the team as a whole has done a very good job to improve the car. Our interest now is to try to ensure we have a good race car for tomorrow. We are very impressed with both drivers. Ralf did a good lap on his first run and the second too was close but not an improvement. Then Irvine improved further still and Ralf was debating about whether to save his tyres or to do a run. We said we thought he could do it and he just went out and did it. Jenson, for his first time in a F1 car here, 10th on the grid in this company and in the car we gave him is a very good job."

Gerhard Berger: "This is one of our best results so far, with Ralf being just 6.59 tenths off pole. In the last three races we had lost rhythm due to crazy weather conditions and some accidents. It looks like we have found it again and this is a positive stroke for the whole team. I find it very impressive that in his last lap Ralf beat Irvine. Also Jenson's 10th position is one from which he can finish in the points. So far we didn't have any technical problems."

Eddie Irvine: "I'm pretty pleased with the way things went today. I could have picked up an extra tenth of a second in the last sector to nail fifth place but the third row of the grid is representative of our competitiveness this weekend. Because I had such a bad test here, I didn't fully understand the car's suitability for this circuit. We've chipped away over the past two days and found bit improvements which have also helped to explain, to some degree, why we struggled so much in Canada. As a whole, there is a much sharper focus about the team this weekend. We have worked much more systematically. I'm starting the race in a points-scoring position and I'm confident the car will work well in race trim, so I hope I can add to our tally tomorrow."

Johnny Herbert: "I'm disappointed. We never really got the right set-up for the conditions. It never felt right yesterday and this morning was the same. So I never hit the sweet spot. Strangely enough, for a lot of the run I was really struggling in the high speed corners, and that's where I normally do very well. My last run was also spoiled a bit by [Giancarlo] Fisichella. I caught him at the last quick chicane, and without that I might have been able to get Jenson Button. We've got a bit of work to do to get the balance right for the race. Let's hope for a better day tomorrow."

Gary Anderson: "I think today's results are a more accurate reflection of where we stand in the overall order. Unlike Canada, where we let things drift a little in terms of setting the car up, we came here with a much more deliberate strategy for the weekend and, so far, it has paid dividends. There was some unfinished business from the Magny-Cours test, but we've worked through a two-day programme and improved the car pogressively. As for the race, we have done some work to further improve our starts over the last two days. Both drivers realise that if they relax and let it flow we can get off the line wihout too many dramas. I would expect us to be in the frame for points tomorrow."

Jacques Villeneuve: "I'm pretty happy as the car performed better than I thought it might. I think seventh is as good a qualifying position as we could have hoped for and we got as much as we possibly could out of the car. I will try for another good start tomorrow as in the previous races and we will hopefully be able to score points in the race."

Ricardo Zonta: "It just didn't work out for me today. I lost my race car at the second corner of the first lap and had to run back to take the spare. We couldn't get it balanced well enough around the whole circuit, so I couldn't deliver the kind of lap time I know I can do round here."

Takefumi Hosaka, Managing Director, Honda R&D: "From yesterday we have worked hard to improve the settings on the car and with Jacques' effort we were able to achieve seventh position. Unfortunately, Ricardo's engine failed on his first lap and he had to take the spare car. We do not yet know the cause of the problem but we will investigate this today."

Jarno Trulli: "It's a shame we couldn't do better. The car was okay but it was very tough. I made a slight mistake on my last run and that was it."

Mike Gascoyne, technical director: "We knew qualifying was going to be very tight, and so it proved. With the temperatures having risen during the day, you needed to put everything together - and we never did. Looking at the various sector times, we were as quick as anyone from fifth place down but neither driver got a complete lap together and others benefited from that. In these conditions, you are always struggling to get the maximum. If the balance of the car is not right then it is easy to make small mistakes - which both drivers did, unfortunately. It's very close, so we'll have to see what the race brings. Rain has been forecast - so that could make things very interesting!"

Mika Salo: "We have the latest evolution of our engine today, yet still my lap-times are slower than yesterday when I was fifth fastest in similar temperatures. We were still struggling this afternoon adapting the car to the changing track conditions. I found this morning that it demanded a different chassis set-up, and we were chasing the optimum all day. With more testing we'll get it right, but this afternoon it made life difficult. The good thing is that we really got my last run right, as the clouds came over. I was able to move up the grid as the temperature dropped, and our timing was just perfect."

Pedro Diniz: "Things seemed to be going really well for me in the first part of the session, when I was 12th fastest. The latest version of the engine felt good and I was quite happy. But then my car developed a problem on upshifts and gradually it got to the point where I had to take over the T-car, which was set-up for Mika. We like different characteristics from the car, so it wasn't an ideal situation for me, especially as I lost time and momentum. I'm disappointed."

Peter Sauber: "We are very close to the top 10 once again, and the times in general are close here. Unfortunately, we did not make as big an improvement as we had expected, relative to yesterday when we were fifth fastest. We are not sure why because we had made the car better. This track is very sensitive to temperature change. The good thing is that we got Mika's last run just right as far as the track conditions were concerned."

Pedro de la Rosa: "It was an interesting qualifying session. Unfortunately I couldn't keep up with the pace of my first run as I swapped into the t-car. I didn't feel comfortable in it so couldn't improve my lap time which is a shame because at that time I was in the top 10. We'll have to wait and see, but even so I'm quite pleased with how everything worked and how quickly the team prepared the t-car for me."

Jos Verstappen: "I'm just very disappointed. The car was generally not right and I couldn't feel any grip and didn't know where to start with what to change because it just all felt wrong."

Tom Walkinshaw: "It's obviously very disappointing for the team. Both the cars and the drivers have it in them to be able to qualify higher on the grid, but unfortunately circumstances today didn't allow our full potential to be reached."

Giancarlo Fisichella: "This is a hugely disappointing result and a very frustrating day. We have been suffering with understeer in the high speed corners and low grip in the low speed ones. We haven't managed to get the balance right either and the tyres go off so quickly it makes it really hard to get in a good lap."

Alexander Wurz: "This result is extremely unsatisfactory. At the beginning my chassis set-up was OK although we hadn't fully corrected the high speed understeer and lack of traction, then we made changes throughout the session that didn't seem to make us any faster. This morning we thought we had got to grips with the tyres but it seems we were wrong. Eventhough we knew we wouldn't be strong here, after the test last week I had expected a much better grid position."

Flavio Briatore: "We already knew this circuit would be difficult for us after the test last week, but we didn't realise our cars would be this slow!"

Pat Symonds: "During practice here you have very limited time to sort the cars out as the tyres are only good for one lap and this was a problem that we had identified in the test, but I'm afraid had not completely come to terms with. We seem to have got neither a good balance nor the grip we require which is what we were expecting after the test. The grid positions are extremely disappointing."

Nick Heidfeld: "After yesterday's free practice session, I was expecting a better qualifying session. The car was well-balanced and the new engine was an improvement as I thought it would be. In the second part of the session, I could have done a better time but the track conditions were much hotter. It is very close in the midfield and hopefully next time we can find a couple of tenths to lift us into the top ten."

Jean Alesi: "From the start of the weekend, my car has not been working really well. I have concentrated with my engineers on finding the problem, but we have not succeeded yet. Anyway, my qualifying session was hampered badly by serious problems with the behaviour of my engine especially when accelerating and slowing down. When I was decelerating, the engine kept on pushing and when I tried to accelerate again the engine felt as if it had something missing."

Alain Prost: "When you arrive with high hopes and then qualify in these positions you are obviously very disappointed. Over the last two or three races, we have been improving the behaviour of the car a lot and we really wanted to turn this into a good result here at the French Grand Prix, especially in qualifying, as we had such a good test here last week. Unfortunately, in both the chassis and the engine's behaviour, we could not find the balance we had last week in weather conditions which, it must be said, were quite different. It is disappointing, of course, but now we have to look for the best possible result here tomorrow and try to finish the race with good reliability."

Marc Gene: "Today we really did all the best we could do both in terms of car set up and in terms of my performance. After this morning's free practice I did not expect such improvement in the qualifying session. The other Teams improve sensibly because they have more powerful engines for the qualifying. As far as we are concerned, to be 2.4s slower than the pole turns out as one of the best performances we could achieve given that we did not test at all on this track last week. I feel more than satisfied also because my car's been improving more and more throughout the session. Apart from the first sector, where we did not manage to find the perfect set-up, I did some good intermediate lap times, in both T2 and T3 sectors and this makes me feel happy not only for myself but for the whole Team as well. Today's has been definitely one of my best qualifying performances since I've been racing in F1."

Gaston Mazzacane: "Generally speaking, I think I did a good qualifying performance today. I am aware that this is a track where we did not test at all which puts us at a disadvantage but my gap with pole is only 2.6s which means that our competitiveness is improving steadily compared to the previous years. From a technical point of view, today's qualifying outcome and the work we did on the car make me feel confident. I believe I can do a good race tomorrow trying to keep the same pace of my rivals."

Gian Carlo Minardi: "If we make an analysis of today's session in terms of time gaps, 2.4s from pole position marks our best qualifying performance, with both drivers, since the beginning of the season. Unfortunately we must realize one more time that the other Teams improve a lot in terms of speed from free practice to qualifying, whereas we lack more powerful engines for qualifying; all these things considered, we can consider ourselves more than satisfied with today's outcome."

Latest Headlines:	<< Previous \| Jul News \| News Index \| Next >>
(03-16-2005): Badoer Continues Testing at Fiorano (03-16-2005): Fisichella Aims to Win Again in Malaysia (03-16-2005): Davidson Lined Up for Villeneuve's Drive (03-16-2005): Preview: Raikkonen Aims to Stop Renault (03-16-2005): Malaysia Preview Quotes: Jordan