Coulthard frustrated by problems

"Don't forget I qualified in the same place for the British Grand Prix and I won that," he said afterwards.

Despite Tuesday's plane crash the Scot had played a leading role in practice and had his sights on pole until he was hit by engine gremlins again as his V10 suffered fuel pick-up problems.

Coulthard had to abort his first run and then lost time in the pits - caught between a time consuming repair and switching the set-up of the T-car, which was being used by team-mate Mika Hakkinen.

He wound up behind Michael Schumacher on pole, Mika Hakkinen second and Rubens Barrichello third.

"I am very, very, disappointed," said Coulthard. "This is the fifth race of the season and we are still having reliability problems which we just should not have. We need to work harder to slow them. We just cannot afford to have these problems because we don't have the margin we used to have."

Coulthard had kept ahead of Hakkinen all through practice as he got a better grip on the demands of this difficult and technical circuit.

But his entire qualifying was blighted by the early engine misfire.

"Fourth place doesn't reflect how competitive I have been up to now," he said. "I could have been on pole, but I had a fuel pick-up problem. I could have either spent a lot of time switching the T-car set-up or run with more fuel in the tank.

"We went for more fuel which meant I was compromised on time and I just went slower and slower."

Coulthard is looking to end Hakkinen's winning streak which has seen the Finn finish this race first for the past two years on the trot - and beat Michael Schumacher, on pole, who has a 20-point lead in the World Championship.