Bourdais: One of my worst days ever

The Toro Rosso driver crashed against the wall in this morning's practice session and then had to be very careful in qualifying, as his teammate Sebastian Vettel had also damaged his machine.

Bourdais still managed 16th place on the grid, but the Champ Car champion was unhappy with how his day had gone.

He was also critical of the track conditions.

"The track is falling apart and the conditions are really difficult," said the Frenchman. "Because of the wind, there was also a lot of debris and leaves, which made the track very slippery, plus the asphalt has got marbles on the racing line because it's breaking up.

"After the morning, I could not afford to make any mistakes and run the risk of not taking up a start place for the race and in these conditions it was just unreal. For me this is one of the worst days of my career so far."

Vettel had a big crash in practice and was unable to take part in qualifying due to the heavy damage to his car.

"This morning I made a mistake, losing the rear end of the car and unfortunately here the walls are very close, without much run-off area," he said.

"The impact was not that bad but bad enough to damage the monocoque in a way that it could not be repaired in the two hours we had available before qualifying. This year of course the rules ban spare cars, so we had to rebuild the damaged one which meant no qualifying for me today."