Michelin tyres key to Irvine woe

The French rubber usually excels in higher temperatures, but although conditions were hotter for qualifying than they were in free practice, Irvine was slower than he had been in the morning.

Having set the third fastest time of practice with a 1m11.688s, Irvine could only manage a 1m12.282s when it counted, leaving him 13th on the grid.

"We lost a lot of grip," he said. "The temperature came up a lot. It was lower this morning and the car had more grip then.

"What a shock! I realised we had problems at the first corner of my first timed lap. As I braked, I lost grip, ran wide and decided to abort the lap. The car was sliding around all over the place and was quite a handful to drive. It was twitchy, unforgiving and simply put, a very different car to the one I drove this morning."

Team boss Niki Lauda said: "To say that we are disappointed is a gross understatement. The words 'surprised' and 'shocked' also come to mind.

"Taking into consideration the rise in track temperature that normally helps generate more grip, we are at a loss to understand the reasons for today's disappointing performance. I can only assume at this stage that we have not extracted the best from the tyres."