US GP: McLaren Saturday notes

West McLaren Mercedes driver David Coulthard will start tomorrow's SAP United States Grand Prix from third position after setting a time of 1:11.413 in the closing minutes of today's qualifying session. Kimi Raikkonen posted the sixth fastest time with 1:11.633. Kimi completed qualifying in his T-car following an incident during this morning's Free Practice, which saw the Finn going off the track and damaging the front suspension.

DAVID COULTHARD

"It's nice to qualify well here at Indianapolis and hopefully we should be able to perform in tomorrow's race. The nature of the track means that it's a real challenge to get all the sectors to fit together. At the end of my last run, I lost about one tenth of a second in the last sector, so it might have been even closer. Now we are aiming to maintain the pace in tomorrow's race, where tyres will be play an important role.

KIMI RAIKKONEN

"I'm a little disappointed with sixth place. The fact that I had to use the T-car didn't help. The team did a great job in repairing my race car following my incident in the second practice session this morning, and the car was ready when I came back from my first run. However, we decided to continue using the T-car for consistency. My second run was the fastest and I was even quicker on my third, but I had to slow down due to the yellow flags. I'm optimistic for tomorrow's race as I will be back in my race car."

RON DENNIS

"As always we are here to win, and realistically that will be difficult to achieve tomorrow. However our grid positions are respectable and we will work hard to carry this performance into the race."

NORBERT HAUG

"An exciting qualifying and an excellent job by David. We are the fastest Michelin team, but the gap to the front row is still quite big. Kimi certainly had the potential to be higher up the grid if he could have started the session in his race car."

-mclaren-