Webber Hoping for Stronger Saturday

Australian Mark Webber is hoping to make progress on Saturday after a disappointing day for the Minardi team in Friday's free practice for the German Grand Prix.

Rookie Webber enjoyed a trouble-free morning session but was hit by problems in the afternoon, when his Asiatech-powered car developed a gearbox problem that brought the session to a premature end. The Australian wound up 21st quickest nearly a second behind the next quickest car.

"It wasn't really an enjoyable session for us today," said Webber. "We tried to collect as much information as we could for Sunday, and actually had quite a lot of fuel in the car. We had a small gearbox problem towards the end of the second session, and therefore weren't able to carry out our normal tyre comparison.

Tomorrow's a new day, though, and we'll check everything overnight and see where we can improve a little bit. As it is a new track layout here at Hockenheim this year, I'm sure there is scope to make some useful progress."

Malaysian teammate Alex Yoong was the slowest driver, over half a second behind Webber, after losing valuable track time in the afternoon when his car became lodged on the curbing at Turn 2.