Firman Disappointed with Qualifying Debut

Briton Ralph Firman revealed he was very disappointed after making a mistake during first qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix, where the Jordan driver is making his debut this weekend.

"I am very disappointed but it was my first time qualifying the car and I was still learning a lot about the circuit," said Firman after posting the 17th fastest time. "What counts is Sunday. I was driving as hard as I could to find the limit and pushed a little too hard when I was picking up understeer towards the end of the lap.

"The tyres had started to go off and we'll have to look at that and understand what was happening so that we can make the most of tomorrow."

27-year old Firman ran into the dirt on his flying lap, losing a lot of valuable time. The British rookie, the current Formula Nippon champion, finished 3.6 seconds off the pace set by Brazilian Rubens Barrichello and more than two seconds behind his Jordan teammate Giancarlo Fisichella.

The Italian driver had a somewhat troubled day too, and suffered from graining on his tyres during his flying lap, which saw him posting the 14th fastest time.

"For me the main challenge was that in this morning's free session I had a problem with the car which meant that I lost the last 25 minutes of set-up work, so qualifying has been very difficult," Fisichella said. "We know we have to make some progress.

"During the qualifying run the car was not too bad over the first few corners but then I had some graining on the front tyres and that caused the car to behave inconsistently over the last part of the lap."