Kimi opts out of qualifying

Raikkonen suffered an engine failure during yesterday's practice session and the team was forced to change it. Under the new regulations an engine change is now rewarded with a 10-place penalty on the grid, so McLaren decided it was better to prepare Raikkonen's car for the race instead.

Raikkonen did however compete in the pre-qualifying session where he managed to post a respectable 1m30.353s lap time on low fuel, which would have been good enough for second [or 12th] on the grid.

"As we had to change my engine yesterday we knew that no matter where I qualified we would have to move 10 places down," said Raikkonen. "As a result we decided to change our tactics so I can start with a good fuel load and new tyres. Hopefully this strategy will pay off tomorrow, but we will have to wait and see. In motor racing anything is possible and I will do my best and hopefully we can do well."

David Coulthard's weekend has been nothing short of a nightmare so far. The Scot just scraped into the top ten in qualifying, but suffered a second puncture after his brake disc exploded in free practice.

"Our difficult weekend continues as we have just not been able to get the package working to our advantage," understated the Scot. "The car feels OK through corners 11 and 12 but apart from that it's really difficult to find the speed.

"The plan for tomorrow's race is to get a good start and gain a couple of places and then keep out of trouble and aim for reliability."