28/08/2004
NEWS STORY
West McLaren Mercedes driver David Coulthard will start tomorrow's Belgian Grand Prix from fourth position after setting a time of 1:57.990. Team mate Kimi Raikkonen's time of 1:59.635 puts him tenth on the grid.
David Coulthard: "I was a little bit worried at the start of my lap as it began to rain. However, the intermediates we chose to use shortly before my run gave us a good qualifying time, especially as this was my first lap on these tyres. The car has been set up for the race with dry weather in mind as is predicted, so we will have to wait and see tomorrow, but I feel we will have a strong race."
Kimi Raikkonen: "Unfortunately it started raining heavily during my run. I made a mistake in the last chicane, which cost me some time. However, from our performance yesterday in the dry I think we should be looking OK in the race when the weather hopefully will be dry again. The overall performance of my car has been good from the start of the weekend, so I am looking forward to tomorrow even though I am starting from tenth position."
Ron Dennis: "Overall the performance of the cars has been competitive with respect of the conditions, save for the inevitable performance differential between the makes of tyre. We anticipated tomorrow's conditions to be better, so consciously opted for dry settings for today's wet qualifying. This coupled with varying track conditions made it somewhat more difficult for the drivers during qualifying."
Norbert Haug: "Today was a weather lottery catching out other competitors even more than ourselves. Kimi had bad luck being out on his lap when it had started to rain heavily, and David's run on intermediates was hampered by worsening track conditions as well. However, with the forecast predicting better weather for tomorrow we should be better in the race."