By Phil Giles
May 17 2003

Giancarlo Fisichella has put his EJ13 onto the 5th row of the grid qualifying in 9th place for tomorrows Austrian Grand Prix. Despite running wide in Friday's session and hitting the barrier, Ralph's rebuilt EJ13 qualified in 16th place. A good effort from the 2nd runner in today's qualifying session.  Fisichella again proved that he is the Drivers Driver and performed superbly to get the underperforming car into the top ten for the race.

"I am happy because we met our target, which was to be in the top ten. I am 9th, and without a mistake in the last corner, I think maybe I could have been 8th. I’m optimistic about tomorrow and hope to score points. The weather forecast is very uncertain so we will have to wait and see." He said.

Despite a first sector where Ralph was inside the time of Ralph Schumacher, he found that the car suffered again from understeer. "I had a good first sector but after that there was too much understeer so I lost time over the rest of the lap. I think the circuit changed a bit in the fifteen minutes between warm-up and qualifying. We’ve got a good race car and there’s no reason why we can’t score some points."