By role
March 21 2003

Renault has found the required speed to place both cars in the top ten at today’s qualification session. The Renault F1 team is quite optimistic about their chances on this weekend's GP. Jarno Trulli has done an excellent job achieving the 6th best time that left him 0.004 secs away of 5th place Coulthard and 1.3 secs away of leader Michael Schumacher.

On his flying lap Trulli was able to set the 2nd best time on the third sector just behind Schumacher.

On the other hand, Fernando Alonso, who had been on top of the sheets all day, faced some oversteering on the second sector that totally ruined his lap, finishing on P10 just over 0.3 secs over his team-mate.

Trulli, on his official statement after the session declared:

“We had a good day today,” the driver said. “This morning, the two sessions allowed us to tune the car’s set-up and make our tyre choice for the weekend. The car’s balance was excellent in qualifying and, ultimately, we were encouraged to see our times so close to the top teams. Everything is looking good at the minute, but the key will be to stay competitive tomorrow, because grid position is more important than getting a good place in the running order on Saturday.”

Alonso valued the time they had to run in a wet track in the private free practice and was optimistic ahead of tomorrow’s final qual session:

“Our times look promising, we are close to the top teams and I think there is still room for improvement tomorrow. I suffered from major oversteer at the end of my lap and it cost me a bit of time, but I know the problem will be fixed for tomorrow’s qualifying session.”

Good to note that Alonso lost half a second to his teammate on the last sector and ruined a fine lap that was highlighted by achieving the second best time in sector 2, just to fall to the 6th worst on sector 3.

So far both drivers are showing to be very close in terms of raw speed and this is making Renault a team with one of the strongest team of drivers on the grid.

Ferrari dominated the session with a Michael Schumacher that showed how competitive the Scuderia is at Sepang. Montoya finished 3rd well ahead of his teammate that finished well off the times.

Tomorrow there will be a quite interesting qualification session, with Ralf Schumacher, Villeneuve and Panis trying to show that they can out pace their less-experienced teammates.