Formula One news

Both Minardis off the back row

Minardi kept yesterday's momentum rolling during the final day of preparations for Sunday's Grand Prix of Europe. Zsolt Baumgartner and Gianmaria Bruni continued fine-tuning their cars for Saturday afternoon's official qualifying session and tomorrow's race, although the programme didn't go quite according to plan. Not entirely happy with the behaviour of his car yesterday, Bruni took over the team's spare chassis for the two 45-minute, Saturday morning practice sessions, as well as the pre-qualifying run. He then elected to switch back to his race car for qualifying. By comparison, Baumgartner had a straightforward day, and recorded a promising 17th fastest time during the morning sessions. Bruni and Baumgartner then put in solid qualifying runs and, as a result, line up 17th and 18th respectively on the grid for tomorrow's seventh round of the 2004 FIA Formula One World Championship. 

"It has been a bit of a confusing day in that we started with the spare car, which felt quite different from my normal chassis, and then switched back to the race car," said Bruni. "I especially want to thank the guys, who worked like crazy to get my race car ready in the final 15 minutes before the qualifying run. It's going to be a tough race tomorrow, but I'm going to push as hard as I can, and hope to finish with a good result." 

Zsolt Baumgartner added, "Overall, I think it has been a good weekend so far. I was not particularly happy with the first sector on my qualifying run, but the remainder of the lap was not bad, and in general, I think we have made some useful progress over the last two days. I believe we have a good race strategy, so we will see what we can do tomorrow."

Team Chief Paul Stoddart concluded, "It was a solid performance today - particularly in the morning sessions and pre-qualifying, our times were very respectable, given the circumstances. Clearly, the qualifying run with fuel shows we have a different strategy from that of the teams we've been much closer to this weekend. All in all, we're looking forward to a productive race tomorrow."

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