Panis pushing for points

"I'm really happy to qualify ninth today; it's great news for the team," he said. "I've been pushing hard all weekend and we've made good progress through each of the sessions. I almost completed a race distance yesterday and worked through various options to get the car to where it needed to be. There's a chance I could have bettered that in my final run but de la Rosa was slowing on his in-lap and blocked me. Even so, I'm delighted with what we have."

Team-mate Jacques Villeneuve never managed to get to grips with the car in the same way as Panis and he was back in 17th place.

"I've struggled to find the right set-up all weekend and for one reason or another we haven't been able to make much progress," he admitted. "I decided to run on new tyres for the session and everybody else seemed to be better off on used tyres. The laps weren't very clean so clearly the tyre choice was a mistake. Once again, we'll be relying on the car being better off in the race."