Coulthard Blames Understeer

The Red Bull driver was hopeful of better things after some stronger performances in qualifying, but he claimed he was hampered by a massive understeer during his qualifying lap.

As a consequence, Coulthard finished well down the order, over two seconds off the pace.

"I'm disappointed," admitted Coulthard. "I was hoping to produce a quicker time, something in the one minute 15s, but that's all we could achieve today. The track was a little greasy this morning, so I was being cautious.

"I dropped a couple of tenths of a second in the first sector, but where I really lost time was Turn eight, the downhill left-hander. The car felt more slippery on the track there than it had done this morning.

"The balance of the car has been working well all weekend, but we've been struggling to overcome some aggressive understeer."

His teammate Christian Klien endured a similarly disappointing day, the Austrian lamenting his lack of track time following yesterday's accident.

Klien finished right behind Coulthard in 16th position.

"I lost about half an hour of track time yesterday when I had an accident and damaged the car's new aerodynamic package," Klien said. "Luckily the team were able to drive new parts over from the UK, but as the guys were still working on the car this morning, I didn't drive in today's third practice.

"The team did a great job, but after losing so much track time, I don't feel as though I'm pushing to the limit through the high- speed corners yet. My lap time was reasonable I'd say and the balance of the car felt good, but my time is a little behind David's.

"We'll just have to see what we can do in the race tomorrow."