Luxembourg GP Mclaren Saturday notes

WARSTEINER LUXEMBOURG GRAND PRIX QUALIFYING

Chassis Numbers: Mika Hakkinen MP4-13/04 David Coulthard MP4-13/06 T. Car MP4-13/07 T. Car MP4-13/02

Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard of the West McLaren Mercedes team qualified for the penultimate race of the season in third and fifth positions with a 1:18.940 and 1:19.169 respectively. Tomorrow's race will prove an interesting challenge for the team who are confident they can find the correct set up for this circuit.

MIKA HAKKINEN 'Today's performance was not as good as I would have liked it to be. I found that the balance of the car was not quite right in some corners and I was not able to carry the speed into certain sections of the lap particularly the second one. On my last lap with fresh tyres I was up on Michael in the first sector but lost time in the final section and couldn't complete a quicker lap. All that said I am still confident for the race, we have time to improve the car and tomorrow is another day.'

DAVID COULTHARD 'Obviously a disappointing qualifying session as I didn't manage to sort myself into a perfect lap. I had some inconsistency from one set of tyres to the other. But none the less, we will continue to work on the race set up and try to improve it before tomorrow.'

RON DENNIS 'We are clearly not where we would wish to be after a difficult qualifying session. We didn't get the best out of the car today but fortunately the race is tomorrow.'

NORBERT HAUG 'Certainly not the result that we expected, third and fifth places on the grid and both Ferraris in front of us, puts us in a difficult position for the race. But it is not impossible to do a better job tomorrow than we did today.'