Monteiro Hoping Gamble Pays Off

Both Monteiro and teammate Narain Karthikeyan opted for a wet-weather set-up for today's dry qualifying, in the hope that the predicted rain hits Spa tomorrow.

The gamble meant both Jordan drivers were clearly outpaced by rivals Minardi, with Monteiro finishing down in 19th place, 1.5 seconds behind Christijan Albers.

"I'm not really satisfied with my lap time even though I had a relatively clean lap," Monteiro said. "The EJ15B clearly has some potential but we definitely need some more running time as yesterday we only did a limited number of laps.

"We still have the race ahead of us and I'm looking forward to that; especially as it is supposed to rain tomorrow and we may have chance to do well."

Karthikeyan, who will start from the bottom of the grid, lamented the lack of running ahead of qualifying.

"Considering the fact that I was the first out on the track in qualifying this afternoon, I had a decent lap but unfortunately the limited track time we had yesterday affected us a little bit today," he said.

"The circuit conditions were pretty similar to this morning and the balance of the car was better. Rain is expected for tomorrow's race, so hopefully it could be a good Grand Prix for us."