Australian GP Saturday Prost notes

Today's qualifying session for the Gauloises Prost Peugeot team saw their number one man, Jean Alesi, qualifying 17th for his debut race with them, but Alesi has great confidence in his new team and is looking to the race tomorrow.

"We have had a lot of problems since yesterday, but the most important thing is the race tomorrow," said the Frenchman. "The Australian Grand Prix always springs a surprise. It is a race of the unexpected and we have to take our chances. I have great confidence in the team and I want to extract the best from my car and to deliver a result in this first Grand Prix."

Alesi's rookie teammate, Nick Heidfeld will start two positions ahead of the experienced Alesi and he feels satisfied with the days results.

"I am quite satisfied to have taken this position despite all the difficulties we have had this week-end," said Heidfeld. "It was frustrating not to have been able to do any better during the free practice sessions. For the qualifying sessions, we started to improve the car particularly for my last run and I was able to climb back up to 15th. This is very encouraging for the whole team and for the race."

"Despite all the technical problems we had during the morning we have been able to go through the qualifying session without any major problems," remarked Alain Prost. "The two drivers have each been able to test different set-ups and to improve the general behaviour of the car. Since the start of the weekend, we have made steady progress but we have not been able to do many laps. We must concentrate now on tomorrow's race, rely on our reliability in order to finish and accumulate more experience in order to make some significant progress."