Albers Optimistic of Progress

Dutchman Christijan Albers is confident his Minardi team can make progress ahead of tomorrow's qualifying for the British Grand Prix

Albers had a somewhat encouraging opening day, finishing in 21st position but only around half a second slower than the Williams of Nick Heidfeld and the BAR of Takuma Sato.

Now the rookie is hoping for more progress on Saturday.

"I think we had a reasonable day today, even if the car is not yet perfect in terms of balance," said Albers. " We will be able to improve, though, as there is still a lot of potential to be exploited in the chassis.

"Our gearing was a little bit short this afternoon, possibly because the wind seems to have changed direction from this morning, but I'm confident we will address these issues and make further progress tomorrow."

Albers' teammate Patrick Friesacher, on the other hand, was slowest after losing valuable track time due to a problem with his car's gearbox.

"We lost some time this morning because of a transmission problem, which was then sorted out for the second session," he said.

"The handling was not too bad, even if I was not able to 'feel' the car quite as I would have liked, but we'll continue to work on finding a good balance tomorrow."