Saturday March 30th, 2002

Sauber driver Nick Heidfeld was delighted with his ninth place on the grid for Sunday's Brazilian Grand Prix after a last minute recovery from a terrible start of his qualifying session.

The German driver, who finished in fifth place at the Malaysian Grand Prix two weeks ago to score his first points of the season, was forced to use the spare C21 car at the start of the hour-long session while his mechanics changed the Petronas engine of his race machine due to a water leak.

But Heidfeld recovered well in the final part of the session, qualifying in the top ten ahead of tomorrow's race at the Interlagos circuit, where the 26-year old scored his only podium finish so far in Formula One at last year's Grand Prix.

"The two cars weren't massively different and both were set up for me, and as we made adjustments we were able to hone the balance," said Heidfeld. "Unfortunately I had a persistent problem with the brakes. Considering everything I'm very happy to be in the top ten, but I know I would have been quicker in my race car."

Teammate Felipe Massa, racing in front of his home crowd, was some three tenths of a second slower than Heidfeld, the 20-year old setting a promising 12th quickest time.

"I wish I could also have made the top 10, but I don't think 12th place is too bad on my first appearance before my countrymen in an F1 car," he said. "The car was really well balanced in the second and third runs, but for the last one we tried a different tyre combination and I wasn't able to improve."

Published at 18:06:33 GMT

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