Minardi Deserved Better, Says Stoddart

The Minardi team were capable of much more than 19th and 22nd positions, according to the Anglo-Italian squad's boss Paul Stoddart.

After an incident-packed day, Australian Mark Webber finished in 19th place with the Asiatech-powered PS02, while Malaysian Alex Yoong was down at the bottom of the timesheets after crashing out during his first flying lap in qualifying.

Webber's progress was delayed when an oil radiator was holed by debris and had to be replaced. Australian Stoddart claimed the problem with Webber's car stopped the rookie from scoring Minardi's best result of the season.

"Despite our cars qualifying P19 and P22, today was ultimately disappointing," said Stoddart, "as the combination of Mark's talent, a well-balanced car and a very competitive tyre from Michelin was denied what should have been the team's best qualifying performance so far this year.

"It was realistic to think P14 or P15 was possible, and had it not been for the time lost switching over the spare car and replacing a damaged oil radiator, I'm sure we would done just that."