Sato hoping for another race finish

Sato was slightly over a second slower than the Midland of Tiago Monteiro, an encouraging performance for the Japanese squad, using a modified 2002 Arrows chassis.

The Japanese driver was only 21st quickest, but thanks to penalties to various drivers, he will gain a few places on the grid.

Now Sato is hoping to repeat his Bahrain feat and finish the race.

"I believe that we did the best job we could today and I think that we achieved the car's best performance," said Sato. "Unfortunately we are still struggling in the mid-sector due to understeer, but we are running reliably and will have both cars on the starting grid tomorrow which is great.

"This is a high downforce circuit so we knew that we would have a hard race in Sepang, but we shall do our best tomorrow and hopefully be able to bring our two cars home."

Teammate Yuji Ide, using a new Honda engine after retiring in Bahrain, finished over 1.5 seconds off Sato's pace.

"For qualifying the car ran better than it did this morning, but the balance is still not good enough," Ide said. "I went off the track during practice because I tried to push too much but during qualifying the handling of the car felt much better.

"It is hot but everybody is running in the same condition so it is not such a problem. I will talk to the engineers and see what we can do to improve the car's pace and I hope that I will be able to do better tomorrow and get to the checkered flag.

"I am really looking forward to my second race here in Sepang."