Villeneuve Upbeat after Impressive Qualifying

Jacques Villeneuve believes he has his best chance in six years of mounting a serious challenge in the World Championship after an impressive performance in Friday's qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix.

The 31-year-old Canadian set the third fastest time in preliminary qualifying despite having mechanical problems in the morning practice session and said he was confident of a good season.

"I definitely am feeling more confident this year," he said. "We thought the car was quick during winter testing but you never really know until you get here but now we do know for sure."

Villeneuve won the World Championship for Williams in 1997 but hasn't won a single race in the past six seasons and has only finished on the podium twice since joining BAR in 1999.

Things didn't look good for him when he was forced to miss most of Friday's morning session with a mechanical failure and was forced to switch to the spare car but he quickly made up for lost time with a great flying lap in the first qualifying session.

Some Misgivings

"I had some misgivings concerning qualifying because we didn't have a chance to do any real set-up work," he said. "I was a bit negative so I really didn't expect to be so competitive."

Villeneuve finished second at the Australian Grand Prix in 1996 and qualified in pole position in 1997 but has had little luck since at the Albert Park circuit, crashing in 1997, 1999 and 2001, the latter of which resulted in the death of a volunteer marshal.

But he says he hopes his luck will be better this year with the introduction of new qualifying rules where the drivers are given just one flying lap to set their time rather than the one-hour session used in previous years.

Villeneuve said he liked the concept of each driver getting a single lap to determine the order of running for Saturday's official qualifying session but opposed the rule that teams have to use the same fuel load they will start the race with.

"The one lap, when you leave the pits cold and back in, I love it, it's great," Villeneuve said. "The Friday formula is great but the Saturday formula where you have to qualify with different fuel from car to car is wrong.

"There's less reasons to take risks in qualifying because the guy that goes faster than you might have less fuel than you. There is less excitement in qualifying, definitely.

"Our car is quick but now we have to decide what our strategy is and whether we want to go low fuel and make sure we're near the front or go with race distance fuel and be somewhere near the back."