Villeneuve spins away qualifying chances

Villeneuve aborted his lap and came into the pits, and will be second on track in tomorrow's final qualifying session.

"I went through the first corner a little bit too fast, but not by that much," said Villeneuve. "We made some set-up changes after this morning's session and the effect was bigger than expected. I just went sideways and lost it. The car felt good until that point and suddenly the rear started sliding a bit but not a big snap. It wasn't something that took me by surprise, it happened very slowly.

"I think we have a good car balance and the car was good on old tyres this morning. It's better that we had this problem today rather than tomorrow but now we have a lot of work to do to get a good result in final qualifying."

His team-mate Jenson Button was 12th fastest, but the third of the Bridgestone runners.

Button said: "Compared to the Ferrari we're only three tenths away from Michael, but there's a bigger gap between ourselves and the Williams at the moment. Who knows though? A lot of people have been using a tyre that may be good for qualifying but possibly not so good for the race, so we'll have to wait and see how that pans out."