Trulli Hit by Engine Problems

The Italian's record of qualifying in the top 10 at every race this season was broken after the team opted to change his power-unit when they discovered a pneumatic problem in Saturday morning practice.

"Our engine has been very reliable this year but this morning we had a pneumatic problem which we couldn't risk, so we had a precautionary change of engines," said Trulli, who will start 18 th.

"It's a pity that we will lose ten places as a penalty because we were going well this morning and we could have gone well again.

"The car was well balanced and the lap went well considering our fuel load and the fact that I had to go out relatively early because I had an accident in the last race.

"But tomorrow will now be very tough for me. Still, we will try our best to race hard and see what we can bring home. This is not the easiest circuit for overtaking but anything can happen."

Although teammate Ralf Schumacher encountered no problems with his engine, massive understeer on his qualifying lap left him down in 10th.

"That was a tough lap because I had a lot of understeer out there and it made it impossible to push as hard as I would have liked," he said.

"The car had been going much better this morning and we will have to investigate exactly what changed between the two sessions. Overall it makes tomorrow a very hard proposition but we will do our best to improve our fortunes after what has been a very difficult weekend so far."