Jarno Trulli turned in another fabulous qualifying performance for Panasonic Toyota Racing when he put his Toyota TF105 second on the grid for tomorrow’s French Grand Prix, round 10 of the F1 World Championship.

The 30-year-old Italian scorched round the 4.41km Magny Cours circuit in 1m14.521s, just over a tenth of a second slower than pole position man Fernando Alonso’s Mild Seven Renault. Trulli has only once qualified outside the top five this season and tomorrow’s French race will be the fourth time this year that he has qualified for the front row of the grid.

“I was delighted with the lap, really happy,” Trulli beamed. “Yesterday I felt we were struggling a little bit but we made a lot of progress on the car set-up and the balance felt very good. We were also looking strong over longer runs in morning practice and so I’m very optimistic about tomorrow’s race.”

Ralf Schumacher, by contrast, had a difficult task, posed by the knock-on effects of his crash at Indianapolis. He recorded a 1m15.771s lap and will start the race 11th on the grid.

“Because of the unusual circumstances of the Indianapolis race, the running order after the six cars that actually raced there was decided by qualifying position,” Ralf explained. “After my accident, of course, I did not actually participate in qualifying and so I was the first out onto the track today, which is always a disadvantage. Many times we have seen track conditions change by as much as a second from the start of the session to the end and getting a good lap time at Magny Cours is very dependent on grip levels. I pushed as hard as I could and locked up going into the Adelaide hairpin. In the race we can still aim for another points finish.”

Third place on the grid was claimed by Kimi Raikkonen’s West McLaren Mercedes (1m14.559s) but the Finn will start the race 10 places further back on the grid as a result of an engine failure on Friday. Fourth quickest was Michael Schumacher (1m14.572s), who was split from Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro team mate Rubens Barrichello (1m14.832s) by Takuma Sato’s Lucky Strike BAR Honda (1m14.655s).

Technical Director, Chassis, Mike Gascoyne, said: “Jarno did another excellent qualifying job and we were also pleased by the competitiveness of our race fuel runs on Saturday morning. We have been through a run of bad luck recently and I’m hopeful that we can turn that around with another strong performance and good points tomorrow. Ralf, of course, was a victim of having to run first, which is never easy and particularly hard to overcome here. But he is a strong racer and, as ever, will be giving his all in the race.”