Berger praises STR3's progress

The team got both of their cars through to Q2 for the first time this season, with Sebastian Vettel qualifying 12th and Sebastien Bourdais 14th.

"We showed that we made a good step forward," said Berger of the STR3, which made its debut at Monaco. "Our expectation was that we should be able to run between 10th and 14th and that's what we did.

"After this morning, we were hoping maybe to get a car into the top ten, but we are not in this league. Overall the team has a very solid performance and is progressing in a good way."

Despite his season's-best qualifying effort, Vettel had hoped that he might have been able to make it through to Q3 to earn a top ten starting slot.

"We just missed Q3 by a little bit so we can be very happy," said Vettel. "I was hoping to be in Q3. We were very close and had a strong performance all weekend and in the end we missed it by not even a tenth.

"We have seen that the pace is quite strong. I hope there is nobody in front of us that is slower. Because then it will be tricky as it is tough to overtake. But we will see tomorrow. I hope that we will have clean air so that we can prove the pace and test the car.

"With the last two races with the new car I think we have to be careful because they were street circuits. Now we are coming back on a normal circuit and it is positive so far."