Formula One news

Schumacher qualifies in sixth

The Toyota team is already enjoying a much more competitive weekend in Shanghai than it did at the team's home Grand Prix last weekend in Fuji. Ralf Schumacher qualified himself for Sunday's Chinese Grand Prix in sixth position, while team-mate Trulli will stat from P13.

Ralf Schumacher commented on his strong qualifying performance today: "Obviously we are happy with what we achieved today in qualifying. It was a decent session overall and the car felt good throughout, even if it was a bit more difficult to drive with the fuel on board in Q3. So I'm happy to have made it into the top six. Nonetheless it will be a tough race because there is heavy rain forecast so anything is possible. I'm sure some people will have amended their strategies given what we saw last week in Fuji but we'll find out tomorrow. We weren't very strong in that race so we will hope for better here."

Jarno Trulli was disappointing not to make it to the final qualifying round. He said: "This has been a difficult day which started this morning when I had a problem finding grip in the car. Straight from the first lap I noticed the balance had changed compared to yesterday and I just couldn't understand how. The more laps I did the worse it seemed to get. The wind is stronger today but that didn't really affect things. So this afternoon I was really short of pace and I was just able to make it through the first session but that was it. If we cannot find out the cause of the problem tonight I may have to switch to the T-car tomorrow. Of course we are expecting another wet race so that will have a massive effect but I will go out there and push as hard as ever to bring home a result."

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