Salo unhappy despite top 10 place

The Finn managed the same feat at the Malaysian GP two weeks ago. But the success has spurred Salo to expect even more progress.

"I am in 10th place again, which is no real improvement on Malaysia," he said. "I am not so happy with this result, but we had a difficult practice yesterday and, even this morning, the set-up was not ideal. Brazil is traditionally a hard race, so I hope we can finish in the points."

His race engineer Humphrey Corbett thinks that points are possible. "Basically we found a good balance this morning and kept it for qualifying," he said. "We didn't change anything on the car except the tyre pressures and left it pretty constant for the four runs. We increased the downforce a little bit and that helped because everything was a bit hotter this afternoon.

"But Mika did us proud. It's down to him and I'd like to think that points are a strong possibility. We're going to be going for it this time. We'll show them!"

Conversely to Salo, team-mate Allan McNish was quite happy despite only qualifying 16th. "The car was in reasonable shape and we made good progress with it on each run," he said. "I went over a kerb on my last run, which lost me a couple of tenths but overall I had a pretty good car - better than this morning.

"Usually we are more competitive in the race than in qualifying, so I am reasonably happy."