Belgian GP Saturday Minardi notes

Marc Gene: "Of course I'm disappointed with today's qualifying session, first of all because a problem, which is still under investigation, forced me to give up the first set of tyres, and, secondly, because even in the subsequent runs my car never felt really good. We did an adjustment in the third run which gave a better result. However, I always experienced problems with the brakes since this morning. Unfortunately during my third interim time Alesi held me up on track with an unfair manoeuvre and forced me to overtake him passing through the chicane thus losing the possibility to improve my time. All in all today was not a productive day with only two runs completed and with a lot of trouble in terms of braking."

Gaston Mazzacane:
"I improved my time run after run thanks to a few modifications and the car had a good driveability. However, I am not satisfied with today's qualifying because, honestly, I hoped for a better result. I expected to improve over this morning's time in order to lower the gap with the other cars, but unfortunately we were unable to be particularly competitive. Our lack of horsepower put us at a marked disadvantage, however now we must concentrate on preparing tomorrow's race as better as we can."

Frederic Dhainaut (Sporting Director):
"It is a pity that Alesi had hampered Marc although his time would improve only by three tenths of a second and in the end his position would not change. As far as today's outcome is concerned, we must consider that all other teams' engines have many more horsepowers than us and, on such a long and technical track, it is extremely difficult if not impossible to reduce the current gap. To be honest, with so little power, we could not do more than this."