Villeneuve hindered by higher temperature

Villeneuve brought the large crowd to its feet as he pushed his BMW Sauber to the third best time in the morning practice session for his home Grand Prix and on the circuit named after his late father and Ferrari great Gilles.

The 1997 world champion was followed on the timesheets by teammate Nick Heidfeld, as the team continued to show promising pace after third driver Robert Kubica had gone fastest in Friday's practice.

But the German squad could not repeat the feat in qualifying, with Villeneuve finishing down in 11th and Heidfeld in 13th position.

"The track heated up, we lost the balance of the car and couldn't get it to work anymore," said Villeneuve. "It is very disappointing as now we are in the middle of the pack for the first corner. We should be all right once the race gets going so we just need to keep our nose clean in the first corner.

"We missed getting into the last part of qualifying by thousandths of a second, which was very annoying as we were really looking forward to being in the top ten here."

Heidfeld added:  "After the good practice sessions we were naturally hoping for a better qualifying result. The car suffered a big balance change, and just felt different every time we went out today.

"On my last lap I had some understeer, especially in the first sector. I am very disappointed but am already looking forward to tomorrow. We can still get in the points as we have had a good pace all weekend."