Montoya close to Ferraris

In the past JPM has tangled with Michael Schumacher at Malaysia's notorious first turn, and he's close enough to give the World Champion something to think about tomorrow.

Montoya was only 11th on the first run, and his first attempt at a second lap was aborted after Takuma Sato spun off. He had to fit a fresh set of tyres - which had been through a longer heat cycle than the originals, and thus were possibly not as ideal as the first.

"The time I achieved in the second qualifying is a bit more representative of where we truly stand, even if I made a small mistake in the last sector," Montoya said. "I felt I had more rhythm, anyway.

"However, we have shown so far this weekend that our potential has definitely improved from Australia but the question is how our competitors are going to behave tomorrow. Race wise I believe we are looking fine, we have done good long runs and the car seems to be very consistent."

Meanwhile Ralf Schumacher was frustrated with seventh place, and he will have to get past Jenson Button and Kimi Raikkonen in order to challenge his team-mate.

"Certainly we were hoping to be more on the front here, even if we have definitely improved from the first qualifying session," said the German. "We drove our first session in a more conservative way than other people and could then improve our time in the second. All in all my qualifying lap wasn't too bad, but I lost some time in the third sector, due to a small mistake. That aside I think we will have a good race, even if Ferrari is going to be strong again."

Williams chief engineer Sam Michael sounded a cautious note: "We have a good race set up on both cars, and look forward to a strong race tomorrow. With the temperatures predicted for tomorrow, the race will also be challenging for everybody's reliability. It will be difficult to challenge the pace of Ferrari."