Monaco GP: Bridgestone Saturday qualifying notes

A disappointing qualifying in Monaco

A mixed day of sun and scattered clouds in the Monaco harbour reflected the fortunes of Bridgestone Motorsport's teams today. After encouraging morning practice times for Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro's Michael Schumacher, including a 1 minute 14.961seconds in the fourth session, the reigning world champion seemed to lose grip in the afternoon to post a disappointing first qualifying time of 1 minute 16.186s.

Rubens Barrichello overcame his balance problems of Thursday but managed to go just 0.044 seconds quicker than his teammate in qualifying. However, with a good race set-up and consistent tyres, the Ferrari drivers are confident of an upturn in fortunes on race day.

The Minardi F1 drivers on the other hand seem to be on good form this weekend after both Patrick Friesacher and Christijan Albers out-qualified their fellow Bridgestone runners in the Jordan Grand Prix team. They will be hoping to maintain that advantage tomorrow.

Hisao Suganuma, Technical Manager of Bridgestone Motorsport:

"It does seem that between this morning's practice sessions and the qualifying session, the Ferrari drivers both lost grip so our engineering staff will be studying the reasons for this carefully. On the other hand, our tyres have shown consistent performance and once the track has rubbered in a bit more tomorrow, the grip should pick up. I'm hoping for a competitive race."

Ross Brawn, Technical Director of Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro:

"A track like Monaco gains in grip as you go along and our drivers weren't out at a good time. Having said that, we didn't seem to have as much grip as we had this morning so I think that whatever had been running during the break may not have helped us very much as the drivers were struggling to get grip. We're happy with the car and seem to have sorted the balance. We have a good race set-up but it could be difficult unless we gain a few places tomorrow morning but, we're always optimistic."

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