Japanese GP Saturday Williams Notes

The Winfield WilliamsF1 drivers, Ralf Schumacher and Alex Zanardi finished ninth and 16th fastest respectively. It was a hard qualifying session for Ralf who went off track in his very first run and had to wait for a while before he could get a lift back to the garage. He completed qualifying in the spare car, which is set for him this weekend.

- Ralf SCHUMACHER : 1:39.717 - 9th "In my first run of qualifying, I pushed too hard, came too hard over the kerbs and crashed into the barrier. With the T-car I experienced some set-up problems with the second set of tyres but we could sort this out.

In the last run I could manage to achieve the ninth place, in spite of being slowed down by the yellow flag. It's a pity, because I am sure that with the race car I could have achieved a better position on the grid, probably around sixth place. Anyway, we are now preparing everything for tomorrow's race and I feel fairly confident that we will be able to finish in the points."

- Alessandro ZANARDI : 1:40.403 - 16th "I am quite happy, as it was a fairly good session. We were steadily improving but at the end of the session, whilst trying to look for some even better adjustments, I made a choice which turned out to be the wrong one. So we couldn't set a good time right when we needed to and everybody else was improving. Grab all, loose all."

- Patrick HEAD : Technical Director "This was a pretty disappointing qualifying session for Ralf; he made a mistake on a very fast lap in his race car so unfortunately he had to go in the T-car which wasn't really quite as good and well balanced. In spite of this he did a very good job in his last lap and got himself into the top ten. Alex had no real problems but just basically could not achieve a better position."