Formula One news

Villeneuve flies BMW flag high in qualifying

After three trouble free practice sessions, the BMW Sauber F1 Team is happy with its best starting position of the season. Jacques Villeneuve qualified 6th after both drivers made it easily into the top ten with positions six and seven in the second part of qualiyfing. Jacques will start from the third row, but Nick stopped with a technical problem so was tenth. 

"I am quite happy because in the middle of the second qualifying session it looked like it would be tough to get into the top ten, but then it worked out," Villeneuve said. "We are very close to Fernando Alonso, and just needed a few hundredths of a second to be in front of him. That makes it a bit frustrating, but there were a few mistakes on that lap. However, this weekend we concentrated on the set up for the race more than for the qualifying, so I am quite confident for the race."

Heidfeld commented, "We were really quick here in qualifying. Most of the time I was ahead of Jacques so a good starting position would have been possible for me. Unfortuanly my car stopped suddenly, and we don't know why yet. It didn't feel like an engine problem, so I think I will be able to start from tenth on the grid." 

Team boss Mario Theissen added, "This was our strongest qualifying so far this season from a performance level. In the second part of qualifying we made it easily into the final session. A car on the third row of the grid is our best result so far. Unfortunately Nick had a problem in the third part and we have to now analyse this, but from looking at data it seems to be an electronic problem. We are confident we will have both cars in good shape for the race."

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