Ralf Schumacher Posts Career Worst Qualifying Result

Ralf Schumacher suffered his worst qualifying result since he made his Formula One debut three years ago, capping a dreadful day for the Williams team on Saturday.

Schumacher, younger brother of double world champion Michael, clocked 1:12.347 in his Williams-BMW and will start Sunday's Austrian Grand Prix from the 10th row on the grid.

His Williams teammate, Briton Jenson Button, was 18th overall, one place better than Schumacher but 1.927 seconds behind Mika Hakkinen's pole position time.

"The 18th and 19th positions are obviously not what we expected," Schumacher said. Button said the race would be "really tough".

Asked what had gone wrong, Schumacher said: "I can't really answer that. We are struggling ourselves to find out why circuits with low-grip are generally a problem for us.

"We had the same problem in Monaco and Montreal. We have been slow the whole weekend due to a lack of grip. We have tried many things but we couldn't set up the car in the best way for this track."

Schumacher has made the podium once this season when he finished third in Australia. He has failed to finish three times -- in San Marino, Canada and on Germany's Nurburgring.

He said he hoped he and Button would be able to overtake and improve their positions in the race.

He said BMW were constantly developing the engine but Saturday's qualifying had shown there was still a long way to go.

Williams technical director Patrick Head said: "We quite clearly haven't got the car well set up for this track and haven't been able to make good use of our recent testing.

"We have a lot of thinking to do but we are going to do our best to have a reliable race tomorrow."

Michael Schumacher was also concerned about his fourth position on Saturday.

But, asked when the two Schumacher brothers would be competing directly against each other, Ralf said: "Michael has the better package without doubt."