Albers Laments Lack of Pace

The Minardi driver, in his first visit to the Malaysian circuit, finished nearly eight seconds off the pace and over a whole second behind his teammate after struggling to get his tyres to work during his flying lap.

"Quite simply, my out lap this afternoon was just too slow, and the tyres were not at their optimum for the qualifying run, the result being that I just wasn't able to put the lap together," said the Dutchman.

"This may be good for conserving tyres, but it's not good for qualifying.  The positive news, however, is that we made some progress overnight, and I think we've now got a good race set-up.  We'll see what we can do in final qualifying tomorrow morning."

Patrick Friesacher had a better day but, despite clearly outpacing his teammate, the Austrian was unable to get close to any of his rivals, finishing 1.4 seconds behind the Jordan of Tiago Monteiro.

"I'm generally happy with the car today, although the balance in the quick corners wasn't quite as good as it might have been, as I had more oversteer than in free practice this morning," said the Austrian.

"I think we have to work a little bit on that, but overall, my qualifying lap was not bad.  We certainly improved from yesterday, and I want to say thanks again to the guys for doing another great job."