French GP Saturday Minardi notes

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"4 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"6 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"4 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."

The T-car (chassis 01) for tomorrow's race is prepared for Marc Gene.