Yamamoto aiming to finish race

The Japanese driver, who drove the Spyker car for the first time on Friday, made progress since yesterday's practice, but still finished a second behind teammate Adrian Sutil.

"From yesterday I had more of an understanding of how the car and tyres worked, so I pushed 100% this qualifying," said Yamamoto. "It was a shame that on the last lap there was traffic so I couldn't get the laptime I thought I could achieve.

"I am really happy though as everything was working quite well and I appreciate all the team's work. Tomorrow I want to push hard but finishing the race is the main thing."

Sutil qualified right in front of Yamamoto and is now hoping for a stronger race tomorrow.

"This afternoon was much better than this morning when we had some problems with the set-up direction," he said. "We then went back to the set-up we had yesterday for qualifying and had a very good balance with just a little oversteer.

"My fastest lap was alright, it's just hard to handle the tyres here. Even with the harder compounds I could do two laps and did a reasonable time. Hopefully we will have a good set-up for the race tomorrow."