Klien Blameless for Qualifying Incident

Austrian Christian Klien was not to blame for going off the track right before the start of his flying lap in second qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix.

Klien, making his Grand Prix debut with Jaguar this weekend, failed to set a time after running wide and bouncing over the grass and gravel runoff. The 21-year-old nursed his R5 car back to the pitlane and will start his debut race from the rear of the grid.

Jaguar said, however, that Klien had suffered a hydraulic failure, which was to blame for the incident.

"It appears that as I approached corner one I suffered a hydraulic failure and as it pushed me off track I just focused on controlling the car," said Klien. "I immediately abandoned my lap and came in and as a result I will be starting in 19th position, slightly lower than I had hoped.

"However I know that these things can happen and I am already focusing on the race tomorrow and concentrating on doing the best that I can in my first Formula One race."

Local hero Mark Webber enjoyed a much better session and set the sixth fastest time of the day.

"It's been a great weekend for me so far and to be starting my home race tomorrow from sixth of the grid is fantastic," said Webber. "I was hoping to be in the top ten and after I saw Takuma Sato's time I knew I had to do a good clean lap if I had a chance of topping him. The first corner can be tricky as you really have to control your aggression and so I was glad to see the back of it.

"There was definitely more grip out there this afternoon which made my job easier and that allowed me to extract a couple extra tenths. I can't wait for tomorrow, it's going to be a long afternoon but very exciting."