23/08/2003

Hungarian Grand Prix - Second Qualifying Report

Olivier Panis (1m23.369s) has qualified in the top 10 for the ninth time in 13 attempts with the Panasonic Toyota Racing team at the Hungarian Grand Prix round 13 of this year's F1 World Championship. The Frenchman's team mate Brazilian Cristiano da Matta (1m23.982s) will start the race five places further back on the grid.

The session again proved to be tremendously competitive with four different car/engine combinations in the first five positions.

Panis said: "Again we are just 0.6s from the pace of Michael Schumacher and Ferrari which is encouraging. Track conditions can be a bit of a lottery here especially on days like today when you have a wind and dust gets blown onto the track. The balance of the car felt pretty good however and I got a clean lap. We have scored points in the last three races and my aim is to continue that momentum."

Da Matta adopted a conservative tactic after the Brazilian had a couple of spins earlier in the day.

"I took a cautious approach to the lap as far as that is possible when you know that your race performance depends upon it!" he explained. "I didn't want to repeat my spin of this morning when I had oversteer. That characteristic was still there in the pre-session warm-up so I had to make sure that I did not overdo things."

General manager of car design and development Keizo Takahashi said: "We managed to qualify in the top 10 again which is always our pre-weekend target so that has been achieved. Of the four remaining races on the schedule we knew that this track would be the hardest one at which to achieve that aim so we have to be satisfied."

For the second time this season 22-year-old Fernando Alonso (1m21.688s) qualified on pole position for the Mild Seven Renault F1 Team. The Spaniard lines up ahead of Ralf Schumacher (1m21.944s) who is out to get his championship aspirations back on track after a non-finish at Hockenheim.

Mark Webber (1m22.027s) repeated the third place he achieved in Brazil for Jaguar Racing - the team's best qualifying performance - while Juan Pablo Montoya (1m22.180s) goes to tomorrow's grid in fourth place. Rubens Barrichello (also 1m22.180s) qualified the first Ferrari fifth ahead of Jarno Trulli (1m22.610s) with the second Renault.