No surprises for McLaren

The Scot outqualified the Finn at the Nurburgring, leaving the McLaren-Mercedes fifth and sixth on the third row of the grid. The two Williams-BMWs and Ferraris locked out the rows ahead of them.

"It's not a great surprise, although the gap to the front is not as big as previously," said Coulthard. "We changed the set-up to make the car faster in the middle sector and consequently we had to compromise performance in the first part which had been our previous best but is not as essential.

"We have to further improve our qualifying performance, but the race is a different story, and if we make a good start and have the right strategy you never know what might happen."

Raikkonen holds a five-four lead in the pair's qualifying comparison for the season. "We improved the car throughout the session, but it was just not enough," said the Finn. "The set up was not perfect for my last run, but I doubt that we would have been able to gain a significant amount of time anyway.

"There is still some way to the competition, but it looks like we have started to close the gap a little, so we are going in the right direction. In the past couple of races I have been able to gain one or two places at the start, so we will see what happens tomorrow."