Albers surprised by lack of pace

"It's going to be a long night, because we are further off than we expected," said Albers after finishing in 22nd position.

"So we need to work really hard to get on the pace for tomorrow. We need to find out why the speed is not there.

"Everyone here is doing a good job, and I'm confident we'll get it solved, but that doesn't mean we are happy, because we clearly need to improve. The lap time is just not good enough right now, and we've got to get that worked out for tomorrow."

Albers finished nearly three second off the pace but, significantly, only two tenths ahead of Super Aguri driver Takuma Sato.

Portuguese driver Tiago Monteiro completed a shaky start for his team after finishing behind the Japanese driver in 27th position.

Monteiro has also vowed to work hard to be more competitive tomorrow.

"It was short day for me," said Monteiro. "Obviously, we didn't run in the morning because of the track conditions.

"This afternoon, we restricted ourselves to running on the same tyre to evaluate different electronic settings - traction control, anti-lock braking, that kind of thing - and we realised that we have an understeer issue, which I'm really struggling with at the moment, so we need to work on that.

"To be fair, all the work we've done on the electronic side has drastically changed the handling characteristics of the car since last week, which should be for the better. It's just that now we need to understand how to set the car up for that.

"So I'm going to work hard with the engineers tonight to get it sorted for tomorrow. Overall, though, I think it's a positive point that we discovered the extra potential to be gained from the electronics."