Kovalainen happy despite no pole

The McLaren driver looked set to beat team-mate Lewis Hamilton's time on his final flying lap, but a mistake meant he was unable to better then Briton's lap time.

Nonetheless, Kovalainen will start from second position, and the Finn admitted he was pleased with the result.

"I went over the limit and the high side you can argue," he said. "It could have been better. In qualifying you have to go for it, and had I not pushed to the limit I could have dropped three or four places.

"Luckily I did not lose more than one place. It is fine, a great place to start tomorrow.

"We have done a good improvement my side of the garage, everyone can be pleased. The factory has been working very hard and fingers crossed it is paying back now."

He added: "It has been a tough beginning of the season but I think we are focusing on working very hard, understanding the problems and moving forward, to improve the car and compete for pole position.

"Before coming here I knew we could fight again, it is always very close, if you get everything right there is a chance to be on pole. I pushed a bit too much in the last turn, I lose a bit of time. I would rather go for it."

The McLaren driver conceded his team is now in a great position for tomorrow, and more so thanks to having KERS, which Kovalainen reckons is a big help at Valencia.

"It is very important, it is one of the good circuits, it is very good here. We can harvest a lot of energy and use it throughout the race and use maximum power which is good. We had experimental parts in KERS which didn't work, so we went back to a normal race evolution."