12/03/2002

Malaysian Grand Prix Qualifying Report

Although sixth place and a point in Melbourne was a fine start to the season Panasonic Toyota Racing achieved an even more notable feat in Malaysia with Mika Salo qualifying in the top 10. Unlike Australia's rain-interrupted qualifying hour this was a true performance achieved in the heat of battle without any influence from the weather.

"I am very happy Salo smiled. To have our first ever top 10 qualifying is good for the team. We have a strong race car and when you start from tenth position you are actually in the race so we have a good opportunity to score more points tomorrow."

Mika's time was just 2.48s away from Michael Schumacher's pole position and chief designer Gustav Bruner was full of praise for Mika's performance. "The crew obviously worked very well too but a lot of it is down to Mika " he said. "We were dreaming of the top 20 but now it seems we've scratched the top 10. It's a good effort from everyone."

Allan McNish had a troubled session however when a transmission problem on his first qualifying run forced him to take the spare TF102. Team Manager Ange Pasquali was pleased with the way the team worked to get Allan back out on track.

"Overall we are happy with the way it went today especially with the way the team reacted to the problem with Allan's car and getting the T-car ready quickly."

Michael Schumacher won what always looked like being a tough fight for pole position. Juan Pablo Montoya made a lot of overnight set-up changes to his Williams-BMW and managed to put together a strong lap to claim a front row place. Rubens Barrichello split the Williams pair with the second Ferrari at the very end of the session relegating Ralf Schumacher to fourth.

Kimi Raikkonen was fifth his McLaren-Mercedes team mate David Coulthard sixth. Nick Heidfeld qualified seventh one place higher than Jenson Button's Renault. Giancarlo Fisichella lines up ninth in the first of the Jordan-Hondas while Mika's fine performance made it seven different chassis/engine combinations in the top 10 positions.