McLaren: a question of balance

"I had already changed out of my overalls before the end of qualifying as I wasn't expecting to do the top three interviews," said a surprised Raikkonen. "I'm very pleased with my lap as we were really struggling with the balance yesterday.

"We improved the car throughout practice this morning and even made a few more adjustments after warm up and the car felt really good. I'm confident of a good result tomorrow."

Disappointingly David Coulthard continued to struggle with balance problems, despite making changes after the warm-up session. "I was really struggling with the balance of the car. As a result I ran wide at Stowe," he said. "Then the front locked up under braking at Club and I lost a lot of time.

"I was generally not hitting the apex of the corners, and we tried to make a few more changes after warm up but they didn't work out. It will be a challenging race for me in front of my home crowd. However, I have started in similar positions before and still managed to finish in the points or even on the podium."

Team princial Ron Dennis blamed a lack of preperation for the problems that made Coulthard's afternoon so difficult: "Concentrating our pre-Silverstone testing schedule on Barcelona definitely made some of the initial set up work more difficult.

"Kimi's third place is a practical demonstration of the importance of a balanced car. David's lack of balance made life somewhat more difficult. However both drivers and the team will approach the race with a view to maximise our points score."