Despite collecting a ten-place grid penalty for an engine change, David Coulthard was on the pace in the first part of today's qualifying. With just seconds of the first session remaining, David and team-mate Christian Klien leapt up the leaderboard and set the third and seventh fastest time respectively, enough to continue in part two. In the second session, Christian was sixth and went through to the final qualifying sector, but DC finished eleventh fastest and narrowly missed out. Christian went on to finish ninth fastest.

David Coulthard: "The car was a good improvement over what we had in the morning session and each of my runs were pretty consistent. We had a problem with the left rear tyre before the last run so I sat for a long time without the tyre blankets on. The car didn't feel as good on that set and was moving around a little more. Unfortunately I was behind Christian and in front of one of the Williams so I couldn't get any clear space to heat the tyres up. I made a little mistake and dropped the two tenths that I gained in the first sector and that was it, game over. Of course you want to go as fast as you can, but all things considered I'm not disappointed. I'll be pretty much at the back of the grid anyway tomorrow due to the penalty."

Christian Klien: "The first session went well, I did a good lap and was P7, but then the second session was really close. I was on my first set of tyres and thought my lap was okay, but then I saw the others were quicker and I had to go out once more on another set of tyres, which we were saving for tomorrow. Then I could go quicker and that was enough to get to the last session. The final part was a bit frustrating. We stopped in the box early as it was so hot, and amended our race strategy for tomorrow.

Christian Horner, Sporting Director: "A pretty positive day today – we qualified ninth and eleventh, but obviously David has his penalty that he has to take and Christian will move up a place, but on low fuel we certainly looked competitive. In the final session with Christian, we elected to take a strategic approach to the race rather than focusing on lap time. With Michael getting his penalty, eighth is a decent place to be starting from and we're looking forward to tomorrow."