Fisichella, who secured P15 in the end, explained in a team press release: "We had a difficult qualifying session today, with quite a few problems. We found the best set-up compromise was to use scrubbed front and new rear tyres, but one of the front ones had a flat spot on one of my runs.

"We put on new tyres and it seemed fairly good but I think the scrubbed front set-up was quicker. At the very end of the session I was doing my quickest lap, which I believe would have put me in the top 10 or 12, and I was held up by Frentzen moving quite slowly. I don't know why, but he wouldn't move out of the way and that held me up."

Takuma Sato finished up down in eighteenth, and was unimpressed with the result. "That was a tough qualifying," he said. "We struggled to get the right balance with oversteer and understeer. We've got warm-up time tomorrow but there's a fair bit of work to do. My time is only about a tenth of a second away from Giancarlo's so there wasn't a lot more to come.

Gary Anderson, director of race and test team engineering, added: "I thought we would have done better than that. We changed the engine on Giancarlo's car before the qualifying session, and the track conditions were difficult.

"We just couldn't really get it right. This is where we are roughly, though, within two tenths of a second. We need to work a bit harder to move forward, I'm afraid - that's life".

The T car is set up for Fisichella for tomorrow's race.