Hungarian GP Saturday McLaren notes

The West McLaren Mercedes team will start tomorrow's Hungarian Grand Prix from second and third on the grid. David Coulthard set a time of 1:17.886 while Mika Hakkinen's time of 1:17.922 put him third. Tomorrow's Grand Prix will be Mika and David's 77th race as team mates -- a new record.

David Coulthard:
'Obviously I would have preferred to qualify on pole position but at least I'm on the front row which is important here in Hungary where its notoriously difficult to overtake. Basically the balance of the car was OK and there are only minor things we need in order to find additional improvements.'

Mika Hakkinen:
'I went out early in qualifying because we had made a radical change to the car after this morning's practice and we wanted to evaluate whether it would be an improvement and have enough time to make further changes if it didn't work. I believe we could have done better today if we had managed to find the right balance. I'm confident for tomorrow because the car has felt good in race trim and we made further progress during qualifying.

Ron Dennis:
'The outcome of practice, which was clearly not as we would have liked it, was nevertheless satisfactory because we struggled to optimise the cars on new tyres. This was a contrast to the good balance we achieved with our race set up and as a result we should be quite strong tomorrow.'

Norbert Haug:
'We didn't exactly achieve what we wanted, which was to find the best set-up suiting the new tyres. That is the reason why we failed to get pole position - which is bad. What is good is the fact that we have the same situation as we experienced at Barcelona and Magny Cours where we won with well balanced cars.'