DC still holds raceday hopes

"It wasn't a very good qualifying lap, so I'm not too surprised that we are on the fifth row," said Coulthard. "But 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 had an untidy lap and admitted that he didn't get the best from the car, but he couldn't shed much light on where or how the time was lost.

"The telemetry shows that until the last sector I was nearly level with my time from pre-qualifying," said the Finn. "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."

Team boss Ron Dennis also thinks that there's room for improvement tomorrow: "This morning's times would have put us further up the grid. However our general race pace seems quite good, which will hopefully give us the opportunity to be a bit more competitive in the race tomorrow."