Coulthard: Oil leak cost me top ten spot

While teammate Mark Webber gave Red Bull their first front-row start, the 37-year-old Scot, on his final visit to Silverstone before retiring at the end of the year, cursed an oil leak that cost him valuable set-up time.

Eventually, Coulthard missed out on a place in the shoot-out by mere hundredths to Renault's Nelson Piquet, and will start his last British GP from 11th on the grid.

"It's disappointing to finish eleventh," he said. "If we'd done some more running this morning, I think we'd have been in better shape. But, we had a problem with an engine oil leak and so were using Q1 to get up to speed in the dry today.

"On other tracks, a loss of running time wouldn't really be an issue, but this one is very open to the wind, so every day is different," he added. "The reality is that we've got the pace to be in the top ten, we just didn't deliver it on the lap that counted today.

"Looking to the positives, we're just outside the top ten, so are able to fuel the car as we want - and the changing conditions may be a factor tomorrow."

Webber was delighted to have outqualified Lewis Hamilton and both Ferrari drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa to line up alongside Heikki Kovalainen on the front row.

But the Australian is under no illusion that staying in front of the title contenders in the race could be a more difficult proposition.

"Five percent of the job is done, but we've got a long race ahead of us tomorrow and we're expecting to have some trouble keeping the Ferraris and McLarens behind us," he said. "But, we're happy for now - this has been coming for a while, we've shown good consistency this year and the team's done a good job."