Panis: We were Capable of More

A frustrated Oliver Panis claimed he could have been further up the grid had he not been hit by mechanical problems during today's qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix.

After troubled practice on Friday, the British American Racing driver's progress was again hampered by electronic problems in his car during the hour-long session today. Panis managed to set the 12th quickest time of the day, but the veteran Frenchman claimed he deserved better.

"My qualifying session today was frustrating and annoying," said Panis. "We had a car to definitely be in the top seven and not where we are right now. For the last two days we have had a number of electronic problems and it happened again in qualifying.

"The frustration is that all weekend, I have been working hard with the team to find the right technical direction but one of the problems still remains and it is difficult to accept.

"It shows we still have more work to do on the detail of a race weekend before the team can think about competing with the front-runners. Nevertheless, I will roll up my sleeves tomorrow and fight hard in order to pick up any opportunity for points."

Teammate Jacques Villeneuve was also hit by trouble today, and like Panis the Canadian was disappointed with his qualifying performance.

"I'm not happy with 13th because we could have done much better today," he said. "We had a mechanical problem this morning, which we only found out about at the end of free practice so we didn't have a set-up ready for qualifying. Generally we've got a tough race ahead of us tomorrow."