Williams aiming for points

Team-mate Juan Pablo Montoya faired little better and qualified 10th, which became ninth after Schumacher's demotion. The Colombian was unhappy with his set-up in pre-qualifying and the team changed his car's ride-height in the short interval between the sessions.

"It's a bittersweet result, of course, but all in all I am more pleased with my qualifying performance rather than depressed about the penalty," said Ralf afterwards. "We got the best out of the car and I am sure we have a competitive set-up for the race, but it's going to be difficult from where we'll be starting on the grid. I'm not worried too much about the penalty, though.

"The important thing is that we keep our morale at a high level. Our car looks better here than it did in Barcelona, as we were expecting, since we thought we had a good package for this track."

Montoya also believes that he has a car he can race with but is concerned that his grid position will make life difficult. "My car felt much better in qualifying than in pre-qualifying, after we made some changes to it," he said. "But I had a big moment in the last corner, and lost some time there.

"The set-up is pretty good and I think we have got a very good race car, but again we are not quick enough. It would be good to get some points tomorrow. It is going to be a tough race."

WilliamsF1's chief operations engineer Sam Michael hasn't given up yet: "Ralf did a good job in qualifying, but he takes the ten place penalty and will now start from 12th position. But regardless of the disappointing race start positions, we will try everything to get both cars up into the points. Strategy will be exciting tomorrow."