Coulthard Hoping for Nurburgring Repeat

Coulthard benefitted from chaos at the start of the Nurburgring race to jump to fourth place after a poor qualifying performance.

The Red Bull driver again failed to shine today, posting the 12th fastest time.

"As you can see from the lap times, we're struggling on this circuit," said Coulthard. "We don't seem to have the top speeds on the straights here or the same speed through turns compared to where we normally are, but it's one of those things.

"The car feels similar to how it did in Germany and we posted a good result there. Maybe we can hope for another incident such as the one on the first corner in Nurburgring. We'll just have to see how things turn out tomorrow."

Coulthard's teammate Christian Klien, returning to racing after missing the last four races, was the first man on track in qualifying and paid the price for it.

The Austrian finished down in 16th place.

"It's never so good being first out on the track in qualifying and I think it compromised me quite a lot," said Klien. "From the last practice session that we drove, the track has changed massively due to the preceding Formula BMW race - I think it was about two seconds slower.

"My lap felt very good though and there were no mistakes. The car felt strong and was well balanced - I don't think there was much more I could do."