Brits face uphill struggle

David Coulthard, winner in 1999 and 2000, is best placed, starting the race from the third row of the grid, behind Ferrari and Williams and alongside McLaren-Mercedes team mate Kimi Raikkonen. Both McLarens hit trouble in the race morning warm-up, however, with Coulthard suffering an engine failure.

Jenson Button looked strong throughout free practice on Friday and Saturday, but also fell victim to an engine failure, more critically on his first qualifying run. That relegated him to the spare Renault chassis, which did not have the team's latest aerodynamic package and also had a lower specification engine. Button eventually qualified 12th, five slots behind team mate Jarno Trulli.

Allan McNish lines up three slots further back. The Scot was frustrated to trip over Kimi Raikkonen's McLaren on his best qualifying lap.

"He had just come out of the pits," McNish said, "and while I can't really blame Kimi too much, it was bloody frustrating. You catch people at a heck of a speed there and I was almost on top of him in the third part of Becketts. Any little lift there hurts you all the way down Hangar Straight and I reckon I lost a couple or three tenths."

The sector times bore McNish out and indicated that he could have qualified very close to Mika Salo, who achieved the best Toyota starting slot of the year despite missing Friday through illness. There was still just 0.39s between the two, but that meant seven places in the tight midfield.

Finally, Eddie Irvine lines up a disappointing 19th on the debut of the heavily-revised Jaguar R3. The Irishman refused to rubbish the car, however, claiming that the team needs more time to evaluate developments.