Malaysian GP McLaren qualifying notes

The West McLaren Mercedes team will start Sunday's Malaysian Grand Prix from fourth and eighth positions after Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard set times of 1:36.040 and 1:36.417 respectively.

Mika Hakkinen
'Obviously I'm disappointed to be on the second row. We have a problem, which affects us in the last sector - we know what the problem is, but we just haven't been able to solve it yet. I'm looking forward to tomorrow and finishing my first race of the 2001 season.'

David Coulthard
'We are struggling to find the right balance, and I'm unable to take the car to the limit and end up driving defensively, which means inconsistent times. We are suffering from the races being fly-aways, as we are not able to test the MP4-16 on the track. However, I'm confident that I will be quicker than some of the cars in front of me, but it's difficult to overtake at this track so it will be a tough race.'

Ron Dennis
'The drivers' comments say it all - whilst we have progressively improved the cars over the weekend there is still more to come. I'm sure we can improve our performance in the race tomorrow.'

Norbert Haug
'A qualifying result which we are not satisfied with. Without doubt we have to improve in many areas, but our team is capable of turning things around.'

- McLaren