More to come, says Webber

At one stage Webber had been as high as sixth, and although the team was running low fuel and in qualifying trim it was still a remarkable performance at arguably the most challenging track in F1. And the Australian knows that there's still more to come from the car.

"We had a really good day today," he said. "We still have some fuel to take out, which is nice, but also Michelin has done a really good job by the looks of it, as well. If we can do something like this in terms of a trouble-free run on Saturday, I would say we could have our best qualifying performance. It's likely to be a different story but I hope we can still do well."

Things went less well for team-mate Alex Yoong and the Malaysian lost a lot of valuable track time after crashing his car on the entry to La Rascasse early in the second session.

"I was just trying a little bit different line and the car just got away under braking," he said. "It was unfortunate, because I really want to make maximum use of the track time available here."