Robert Doornbos put on a fine performance in his debut qualifying performance for Red Bull racing here at the Shanghai International circuit today when he qualified tenth on the grid for tomorrow afternoon’s Chinese Grand Prix. In very wet conditions, the Dutchman finishes two places ahead of his much more experienced teammate, David Coulthard and he is thrilled with the result.

“That was good. It’s good for us when it rains, as it mixes up the grid a bit and the gap to the top teams gets a bit closer,” he said. “And we did it. It’s exciting to get through to the third session and it’s good to know I’m going to wake up tomorrow and go racing. It’s the first time I’ve run under the new qualifying format and it’s definitely preferable to last year’s when it was just one lap, it’s more exciting for everyone to watch. I think we can do well tomorrow. The weather forecast isn’t so good, which can be a help to us and maybe give us a good result.”

Meanwhile, David Coulthard will start behind him in twelfth place after experiencing a few minor glitches.....

“The conditions weren’t too bad to be honest,” David said. “It was quite wet at the beginning of the second session, so I went out on a full set of wets to check what the time loss might be. We then got in a spot of bother but, as with all these situations, it wasn’t due to just one thing. The first problem was that the count down in the car stopped working. I didn’t have a pit board so couldn’t work out where I was relative to the end of the session. There was also a radio problem, so when I was asking for the information I wasn’t able to get it. By the time I did come in, there wasn’t enough time to change the tyres and go back out. With the benefit of hindsight, all I needed to do was stay out, run round and I would have been quick enough to go through. Obviously I was wanting to get the maximum lap time possible and that caught us out.”

“To finish tenth and twelfth on a track that favoured Michelin runners is disappointing,” added Christian Horner. “We had the potential to be better. David was unfortunate because he clearly had the pace to make the top ten but, unfortunately, due to a communication problem, wasn’t on the track at the right time. Robert did a good job to reach the top ten in his first qualifying session for the team. We’re not too far from the points scoring positions and that’s where we’ll be pushing to be tomorrow.”