Saturday's afternoon qualifying session lasted for an hour. Each driver was limited to twelve laps, with the starting order decided by the drivers' fastest laps. During this session, the 107% rule was in effect, which necessitated each driver set a time within 107% of the quickest lap to qualify for the race. The session was held on a dry track with cloudy weather conditions; the track temperature ranged between . Montoya clinched his third consecutive pole position and the seventh of his career with a time of 1:29.906 which was set thirteen minutes before the session ended. He was happy to take the pole position despite having set a target to be on the second row. Montoya was joined on the front row of the grid by teammate Ralf Schumacher who was 0.009 seconds off Montoya's pace and did not change his car's set-up. Michael Schumacher qualified in third and his race car was stuck in gear on his first out lap and switched to the spare Ferrari car for the remainder of the session as his mechanics were unable to rectify the gearbox issue. He made two minor mistakes at the final two corners of the circuit on his final run after pushing hard which prevented him from improving his lap time. Barrichello progressively changed his car's balance over the one-hour qualifying period and secured fourth. Coulthard changed his set-up to run faster in the circuit's middle section which compromised performance in the first sector but took fifth. Räikkönen dropped one of his wheels on the turn thirteen kerbs which restricted him to sixth. The two Renault drivers filled the fourth row of the grid with Trulli ahead of Button. Trulli was happy with his starting position although Button had understeer from his second qualifying run and made a minor change to his rear anti roll-bar in an attempt to go quicker but was delayed by slower cars. Heidfeld felt vibrations after flat-spotting his front-right tyre on his first run which restricted him to ninth. Salo rounded out the top ten qualifiers and reported his car handled best on his first run but it deteriorated afterwards.