Qualifying did not permit Jordan Ford to fulfil the promise of positive practice and warm-up sessions, with Giancarlo Fisichella’s and Ralph Firman’s lap times placing them 17th and 19th on the grid for tomorrow’s race. Firman made a driving error at the beginning of his flying lap and Fisichella is hopeful that his position is a reflection of stra tegy.

Giancarlo Fisichella; "Obviously this is not a good day. I’m very disappointed and confused because I don’t know where other people are with fuel. Hopefully our strategy is good for tomorrow. I hope it’s going to be wet."

Ralph Firman; "It was a promising day before qualifying. But you only get one lap and I made a mistake at the first corner, locking up the front wheel and then had a big flat spot on the tyre. From that point on the rest of the lap was very difficult. It should be okay tomorrow."

Gary Anderson, Director of Race and Testing Engineering; "From my point of view it’s difficult to know whether that was good or bad. We’ve picked a race strategy that we thought was right for them both. We were two seconds behind Michael yesterday on low fuel qualifying and we’re two seconds behind him today. With whatever fuel strategies everybody else has, that means we’re a lot further back on the grid than we expected. It seems strange to me. We’ll really have to wait until tomorrow. Ralph messed his lap up – that’s one of the downsides of the new qualifying format."