Malaysian GP Saturday Minardi notes

Marc Gene:
"I feel pretty satisfied with today's qualifying, perhaps one of my best performances of the season. My time has improved 1"2 from this morning's time and I was 3" quicker than last year, albeit having the same engine. This means that we all made a superb job, from the engineers who worked out a good car set-up to the mechanics who fixed my damaged car this morning after I passed over a kerb. My only regret is to have missed out one place by just one tenth of a sec with regard to Diniz's Sauber. However today I could have hardly done better than this."

Gaston Mazzacane:
"My qualifying performance was a complete disaster, however I am trying not to feel too pessimistic for tomorrow's race, where hopefully I will be more competitive. Today I never managed to set a good timed lap over my fourth attempts. All I can do now is to prepare myself as best as I can for tomorrow's race, which is so important to me."

Gian Carlo Minardi:
"We are happy with Marc's improvement over today's qualifying session. His lap times were three sec. faster compared to last season and, honestly, I don't think we could do better. Without pretending to find any justification, I would like to reckon that such an improvement was possible despite we had the same engine as last year. This proves how good has been the job done by the Team on this year's car. Of course we regret we cannot feel satisfied with the current grid positions achieved."

The T-car (chassis 01) for tomorrow's race is prepared for Marc Gene