Japanese GP Sauber Saturday notes

On Peter Sauber's birthday, Nick Heidfeld and Kimi Raikkonen qualified their RED BULL SAUBER PETRONAS C20s in 10th and 12th places respectively for tomorrow's Japanese Grand Prix.

Nick Heidfeld
The team did a great job last night to get my race car repaired, for which I'd like to thank them. To be honest, after yesterday I didn't expect to make the top 10, so I'm pleased with this afternoon's result. The car wasn't quite as good in qualifying as it had been in the last two races, and on my last run I got some traffic. Not enough to hold me up, but enough to lose me some downforce. That was a pity because I had improved in the second sector. Overall, though, I'm happy, and confident that we will be strong in the race.

Kimi Raikkonen
Early on the car was too heavy when I had to go for a weight check, and after we had corrected that my other runs were hampered by understeer. On the final run we still hadn't dialled that out, and then I got some traffic, which was frustrating.

Peter Sauber
That was a very hard and competitive qualifying session, especially now we have very strong Benetton Renaults. Our goal is always as a minimum to qualify one car in the top 10, so we achieved that with Nick and I am happy with that result.