Fisichella confident of stronger race pace

The Renault driver was unable to make it to the final session for the third time in a row, having to settle for 11th place.

The Roman will start from the top ten, however, following a penalty to Williams' Nico Rosberg for an engine change.

Fisichella admitted his car simply did not have the pace today, but he is still hopeful the race will be stonger.

"It was a very tough qualifying session for me," said Fisichella. "The car's grip level was not great, but I could probably still have made it through if I had changed to my second set of tyres a lap earlier.

"But the main problem was the pace of the car in this configuration, which was not quite strong enough today.

"Tomorrow is another day though, and we have already moved up a position thanks to Rosberg's penalty. If the conditions develop in the right way, I think we can have a strong race."

Teammate Heikki Kovalainen is hoping the team will benefit from being able to work on their cars ahead of tomorrow's race, especially with the changing weather conditions at the Japanese track.

"The balance of the car was pretty good, and I did some good clean laps in difficult conditions, but the grip just wasn't there: the car was sliding on all four wheels in almost every corner," said Kovalainen, 12th fastest.

"There's not much more to say, because our positions reflected our pace and we were not strong enough to get into the final part of qualifying.

"However, we know that we made some deliberate choices because the cars are now in parc ferme until the race, and hopefully they will pay off tomorrow."