Massa shines for Sauber

Massa, who is under pressure for his place in the team after making a number of unforced errors this season - including one in practice yesterday - was at his spectacular best, but kept it all on the black stuff to record a best lap of 1m15.047s.

"Congratulations to Felipe for a fine job this afternoon in qualifying, and to his mechanics who worked so hard to build him up a new car after yesterday," said Sauber. "Well done, too, to Nick Heidfeld, for his commitment and application in working with his engineers to improve his car. Seventh and eighth places are a reward for all our effort, and are particularly important here where overtaking is so difficult."

Heidfeld was just under a tenth down on Massa courtesy of a great last-ditch effort that moved him up from 16th. The German admitted that he had been struggling with his car and was happy to have made it into the top 10.

"All weekend we have been chasing the balance on the car, and on my second and third runs it was still understeering too much," he said. "For my final outing we changed one thing and it made a significant difference. The balance still wasn´t quite right, but considering what we had been fighting against up to that point I am very happy with eighth place. Last year I had a really good race here, and I don´t see why we shouldn´t repeat that again now."