Webber Stays Realistic Despite Strong Start

Australian Mark Webber is not expecting to be able to keep his impressive eighth position in Saturday's qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix.

The Minardi driver, running on qualifying trim during the second practice session today, was only around one second off the quickest time with his Asiatech-powered PS02.

Rookie Webber enjoyed a trouble-free day, and though he is hoping to avoid problems during the rest of the weekend, the Australian admitted he is likely to slip down the order on Saturday.

"We had a really good day today," said Webber. "We had two strong sessions with no problems. I like driving on this track and the engineering guys and the mechanics did a good job, so we're really satisfied with today.

"If we can do something like this in terms of a trouble-free run on Saturday, I would say we could have maybe our best performance in qualifying here. Obviously, we'll have to see what happens. It's likely to be a different story Saturday, but I hope we can still do well."

Webber's teammate Alex Yoong was not so lucky today, the Malaysian causing the second session to be red flagged after crashing his Minardi at the Rascasse corner. Yoong, who was second in the historic Monaco Grand Prix last weekend, finished the day at the bottom of the timesheets.

"I really like Monaco and we had a good start with a productive session this morning," he said. "Unfortunately, early in the second session, I was trying a little bit different line and the car just got away under braking. It was unfortunate, because I really want to make maximum use of the track time available here."