By Jamie Makin
March 6 2005

Team SAUBER PETRONAS drivers Jacques Villeneuve and Felipe Massa will start today’s Australian Grand Prix from fourth and 18th positions respectively after this morning’s final qualifying session. The new rules which "aggregate" the time of both qualifying sessions into a final result meant that there was nothing Felipe Massa could do to regain the ground he lost yesterday. As a result, the team opted to leave him parked in the garage for the second session. "As we did not even record a time yesterday because of the rain storm, and given the need to conserve our tyres and engine, we decided that there was no point in going out this morning as we would only have been able to achieve a minimal improvement on our grid position," Massa explained. In fact, even without going out we moved up because Michael Schumacher and Takuma Sato have changed their engines! Starting near the back is not what I had been hoping for, but we can still have a good race this afternoon."

Jacques Villeneuve found himself at the opposite end of the spectrum as good fortune came his way in the form of a dry track yesterday. He was able to maintain his strong fourth position, equalling SAUBER's best result at the track, set by Heinz-Harald Frentzen last season. "I’m very happy to be starting from the second row in my first race for Team SAUBER PETRONAS," said Villeneuve. "We had some good tests in the winter, but I was not quite expecting that. The car is getting better all the time and the hardest part is now out of the way. I did a defensive lap this morning to be sure of maximising our strong position from yesterday, and I was satisfied with that. It’s very difficult to predict what will happen in the race, but I’m going to be fighting very hard for points. It depends too much on what the others are doing."

Sunday, Qualifying 2 (Aggregate Times):

s

Driver	Chassis	Best Time	Position
J. Villeneuve	C24-03	3:06.846 (+5.386)	4
F. Massa	C24-02	No Time	18
Spare Car	C24-01	-	-

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