Coulthard Pleased with Practice Performance

Scot David Coulthard joked he is the "Friday world champion" after he ended the practice sessions at the head of the timesheets at the Nurburgring - but he played down the prospect of claiming pole position for the European Grand Prix.

McLaren driver Coulthard continued his impressive run of form on the opening day of Grands Prix as he headed Michael Schumacher in the times and admitted that he has a solid base to work from.

"I'm the Friday world champion," Coulthard joked. "I'm quite pleased with the way practice went, probably more than normal because I had a new section of the track to learn. I tried to be, to use a McLaren word, quite disciplined in my braking points and also in the chicane and that has given a solid base from which to build a lap time."

But Coulthard accepted that a further improvement can be expected from rivals Ferrari and Williams in Saturday's qualifying session and admitted that his McLaren package cannot get much better.

He said that McLaren have not employed a strategy aimed at topping times on Friday's and claimed that the team's lack of a qualifying spec means they have less to work around and tend to be quickest.

"We've seen us be quick on a Friday in the past but it is not a strategy," Coulthard added. "We're not out there to look good on a Friday and to deceive on Saturday. We're out there just to learn as much as we can about the car and tyres and it just so happens that Ferrari and Williams in the past have had a better qualifying package.

"I don't know the strategy of other teams and I doubt when we analyse weekends afterwards that there is much difference in the fuel levels we run. It could well be that other teams have qualifying engines or they take off a lot of stuff from the car which helps the performance.

"I remember in 1995 with Williams people asked why we could go so much quicker from Friday morning to qualifying and it just basically you turned up the wick a bit. We don't have qualifying spec at the moment - what you see is actually what we are doing."