The West McLaren Mercedes team will start the final race of the 2000 Formula One season at the Sepang circuit in Malaysia from second and third. Mika Hakkinen's time of 1:37.860 put him on the front row while David Coulthard set a time of 1:37.889.
Mika Hakkinen:
'I put in my best time at the end of the session but unfortunately it
wasn't fast enough. The characteristics of Sepang mean that it's easy to
lose time entering and exiting corners and if you don't have the right
balance that is a problem. It's going to be tough tomorrow because the way
the cars are designed aerodynamically means that no air gets into the
cockpit and with both temperature and humidity being high it will be very
draining.'
David Coulthard:
'At this track the exit of a corner can make all the difference to a lap
time. We made some changes to the car for my second and third runs, but it
didn't work so we went back to our original set-up, but we still need to
work on the balance. However the nature of Sepang means that its quite easy
to detect where you are losing time so we should be in good shape for
tomorrow.'
Ron Dennis:
'We spent most of the untimed sessions this morning optimising our
performance for the race and perhaps this was reflected in our qualifying.
Hopefully the rewards of our efforts will come tomorrow.'
Norbert Haug:
'Considering the gap to pole this was certainly not one of our best
qualifying performances, but nevertheless I think that victory is
possible.'
