Mechanical woes leave Montoya stranded

The Colombian, who had never lapped the circuit before today, completed just five laps in total but was forced to pit after three of these due to chronic electrical and fuel pick-up maladies. To add insult to injury, he even found time to understeer on to the grass on one of his out laps.

"It looked like every problem was falling on me today," said Montoya. "First a fuel problem, then an electrical problem. We changed the battery and some more bits, but in the end this didn't help."

Montoya is concerned that this lack of track time will have a serious impact on the rest of his weekend as he attempts to build on a promising debut race in Formula 1, which had promised a points-scoring finish until engine problems intervened in Melbourne.

"I don't know this track at all and I really need to learn it," he added. "From what I could see the circuit is better than what I thought, mainly because it is really very wide."

BMW motorsport director Mario Theissen said his engineers will do everything to ensure Montoya has a clean run tomorrow, when there are just two shorter practice sessions before qualifying begins.

"It looks like it could be an alternator defect, but we are analysing the reason for that," said Theissen.

Another spanner in the works is that although team mate Ralf Schumacher completed a high number of laps on his way to tenth fastest time, the German had problems of his own.

"I had some set-up problems and the car oversteered in many corners which gives us some work for tomorrow," said Schumacher. "It wasn't a tyre-induced problem though, the reason for the imbalance lies in the set-up of the car."