Austrian GP Saturday Minardi notes

AUSTRIAN GRAND PRIX - 24th July 1999 QUALIFYING

LUCA BADOER Chassis 01 19th 12 laps time: 1:13,606 "I feel satisfied because a technical step forward has been achieved and it has been clearly perceived. It is the first time we started the qualifying session ahead of both Arrows, our rivals. We feel sure we can get a better improvement in the race. Yesterday and this morning we were decidedly better than in the qualifying session because we had a race set-up. I feel confident I will do a good race tomorrow."

MARC GENE' Chassis 04 22nd 10 laps time: 1:14,363 "I feel disappointed. Today we didn't manage to exploit the car's potential. After yesterday's free practice, we did a few modifications which could lead to a further car's improvement but the result was not as we expected. Data gathered during this morning free practice turned out to be wrong in the qualifying session thus preventing us from detecting a good strategy for tyres and set-up. In the end we found the right direction but it was too late because I was not able to score a good lap time. Although things didn't turn out very well today, I look forward to a pretty good race tomorrow. The car has improved a lot and it is definitely more driveable."

CESARE FIORIO: "Developments in terms of performances are definitely confirmed even though in the qualifying session Marc couldn't find a good balance thus being unable to exploit his car whereas Luca succeeded in posting a good lap time. Unfortunately the last set of tyres was not as performing as the previous one and we, therefore, couldn't attack the two cars ahead of us which were within our reach."