Irvine promises strong race for Jags

Irvine outqualified his Spanish team mate for the first time in six races, but labelled the team's overall performance as "poor" after suffering from continued handling problems.

"I think I got a reasonably good lap," he said. "We just had loads of understeer, and we couldn't get rid of it. By the third run, the car was as good as it could get for the whole session, but I needed more grip on the front end.

"We made a change, but I just had a shocking vibration coming from the front. I tried to follow a Ferrari through the last bend and "boom" it was gone! The last run was a little bit slower, but I don't really understand the problem there."

Irvine has admitted that he is upbeat for the race, however. "We'll be good tomorrow," he added. "We'll just probably do what we normally do, cross our fingers and hope to win. We have little choice but to invest everything in an excellent race strategy which may or may not see us salvage something."

De la Rosa admitted that he was equally disappointed with the team's qualifying performance. "We're not making the tyres work at their best," he said. "Williams-BMW proved how good the Michelin tyres are, but we don't seem to be able to extract their peak performance.

"I could have got a better time, because I was held up on my last two runs, but it would not have made a massive difference. The car will be better in race trim, but a lot of that is down to how well we can cure this understeer problem."