Coulthard: McLaren Making Progress

David Coulthard says his McLaren team have made progress since the last race, despite their poor showing in today's qualifying for the Spanish Grand Prix.

McLaren, enduring their worst start to a season in 23 years, were again well down the grid: Finland's Kimi Raikkonen, Championship runner-up to Michael Schumacher last season, was 13th while Briton Coulthard finished in 10th position.

The Scot, however, said the team are moving forward.

"It wasn't a very good qualifying lap, so I'm not too surprised that we are on the fifth row," said Coulthard. "My lap time was slower than what I did this morning on the same level of fuel, so I believe that we have the potential to improve our position during the race.

"It might not be obvious looking at our qualifying performance, but I think we are making gradual progress. At the end of the day it's where we finish in the race tomorrow that matters."

Raikkonen, who has scored just one point so far, said he felt uncomfortable with his car's handling towards the end of his flying lap.

"The telemetry shows that until the last sector I was nearly level with my time from pre-qualifying," said Raikkonen. "I'm not sure what happened but I didn't feel comfortable with the car and lost a lot of time towards the end. 13th position is not ideal but I will fight hard in the race and we will see what happens."