Pizzonia Pleased with Qualifying Pace

Brazil's Antonio Pizzonia was pleased with his performance in today's qualifying for the Malaysian Grand Prix after a torrid start to his weekend on Friday.

The rookie Jaguar driver was unable to set a time on Friday and had to come out on track in first position in today's session. Pizzonia, who had been hit all weekend by a fuel pick-up problem that was short-term fixed by the mechanics, wound up 15th quickest, outqualifying his more experienced teammate Mark Webber.

"Given the problems that I suffered during qualifying in Melbourne and not getting a run yesterday, I am very pleased to have bagged my first clean qualifying lap for Jaguar," said Pizzonia. "It wasn't ideal being the first driver on the track, particularly as it was quite dirty in places.

"I wanted to complete a clean lap and didn't aim for anything too special. I didn't make any mistakes during my run but it was a little conservative. I wanted to do a good job and given our strategy for tomorrow's race, it was very important not to make any silly mistakes through over-exuberance.

"The car felt pretty good throughout the lap but let's now see what happens in the race tomorrow."

Australian Webber finished right behind Pizzonia after making a mistake on his flying lap.

"I was very pleased with how my qualifying lap was going up until the final hairpin where I lost around three-tenths of a second," he said. "It's a shame but I'll just have to push that much harder tomorrow."