Trulli Hit by Brake Problems

The Italian, who has been one of the qualifying sensations of the year, could manage no better than ninth fastest at Hockenheim.

"I had a slight problem with the brakes so I didn't have the confidence to push as hard as I would have liked," said the Italian, who has qualified inside the top 10 at every race so far this year.

"But I'm reasonably comfortable with where we are on the grid given that we've struggled for pace so far this weekend. It's hard to say how we can fare in the race but maybe some of the other cars will be on different strategies to us.

"We haven't had the best of times in the last two races so hopefully we can turn it around tomorrow and score some more points. We'll certainly be pushing very hard."

Ralf Schumacher continued to be overshadowed by his teammate as he could only set the 12th quickest time.

"That was a reasonably clean lap," said the German. "The car was balanced well throughout and I made no mistakes. Perhaps I could have gained a tenth in the first sector but apart from that there were no problems.

"It's a very tight grid and hopefully we've made the right tyre choice for the race tomorrow. Obviously it will be a hard race from where we are but the package should work well in race conditions so we'll be doing our best to break into the points again."