Villeneuve baffled by Fisichella's anger

Fisichella, who had shaken his fist at the Canadian several times as he followed the BMW driver on the track in the penultimate session, clearly blamed the 1997 champion for baulking him.

Standing in the BMW garage in front of Villeneuve's car, with the Canadian still sitting in it, the Renault driver, who missed the second cut, pointed his finger and made his feelings clear.

"Fisichella seemed to be really angry and I am not exactly sure what happened," he said.

"I thought I was ahead of him and I was trying to get out of his way, maybe I slowed him down a little bit but I never thought he was that close to me. I will go and talk to him because it was not done on purpose.

"I don't think I hindered him and don't know why he is furious. I saw him but I thought there was enough space."

Villeneuve admitted he was hoping for more in qualifying, despite a strong performance to eighth place.

"The plan today was to get in the top ten, but we were hoping to be slightly better than P8," said the BMW driver. We concentrated on our qualifying set-up for a change, which enabled us to start further up the grid."

Despite that, the Canadian was still optimistic of fighting for a points finish tomorrow.

"I think we can get in the points, but will have to see how our set-up lives in the race," he said.

Villeneuve finished well ahead of teammate Nick Heidfeld who, after starting from pole position in last year's race, endured a disappointing day to finish only 15th.

The German driver admitted he was unsure about the reason for his lack of pace.

"Of course I'm unhappy with my lap time and my position," he said. "The car was not bad, although in the second half of the lap I had some understeer and the overall grip was not ideal.

"I don't know why I didn't manage to record a better lap time as we definitely didn't have the difficulties today we had here on Friday or in Imola."