Malaysian GP Saturday Williams notes

Ralf Schumacher and Alex Zanardi will start from eighth and 16th positions respectively in the first ever Malaysian Grand Prix. Not happy with his car's balance in the first three runs of qualifying, Ralf improved his time of 1.2 seconds in his very last fast lap, gaining a place on the fourth row of tomorrow's starting grid. Unfortunately, Alex could not do the same, due to a mistake that caused him to go off the track in his final flying lap.

Ralf Schumacher

Best Position: 8th Chassis: FW21 06 Best Time: 1:41.558

"At the end I am quite happy with the eighth position in qualifying. In fact, at the beginning of this Grand Prix weekend we had some troubles with the car but the team made a very good step forward. In my third run I felt that the set up of the car was quite good and we decided not to change anything but the tyres… and I could sensibly improve my time. I am pretty confident anyway, and I think that our team can show a good performance in the race tomorrow."

Alex Zanardi

Best Position: 15th Chassis: FW21 06 T-Car Chassis FW21 02 Best Time: 1:42.885

"I had a poor qualifying. I set the same time three times and in my fourth run, when I was trying to do something better, I locked the wheel and went straight on. Anyway, my time was not good at all. Our car is pretty difficult to drive and I think we gave in too soon, thinking that we could not get anything better out of it, whereas my team-mate achieved a much better time at the end of the session thanks to a daring aerodynamic set-up."

Patrick Head, Technical Director

"It's difficult for me to make too much comment because I am a very late arrival here. We have had problems getting to grips with this track and we got some indicators on car set-up as late as during the qualifying session. Ralf did a very good job getting a very good lap in, on his last run. Our car is not performing as strongly as it did in the last three or four races and we have got to make the best of that. It's going to be a very hard race tomorrow with very high temperatures, therefore one of the biggest factors is going to be putting our cars in the best conditions to finish the race."