Montoya Glad to be Back on Pole

Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya was delighted after he grabbed pole position for Sunday's German Grand Prix with a blistering late lap to outpace his German teammate at Williams Ralf Schumacher.

Montoya, pushing to keep his title challenge alive, clocked a best lap of 1:15.167 to secure his first pole of the season in a qualifying session run in torrid heat on Saturday. Montoya was happy to return to the top of the grid after having scored seven pole positions last year.

"It's taken quite a long time to get it," said the Colombian. "I'm very pleased with it. The car has been working good all weekend. Yesterday the strategy in my car was really good. Today we got more running on the tyres we're going to race and it really paid off.

"We did a lot of development in the car and I think we've got a really good race car."

The Williams driver, third in the Championship behind Ferrari's World Champion Michael Schumacher and McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen, is expecting a difficult race.

"It's going to be hard physically and mentally because you're going to be sweating a lot and the car's going to be having a hard time and I think it's going to show," he said. "I think reliability is going to be a big factor.

"I think we've been pretty strong this year on that and if we can keep it up it's going to be really good for the Championship."

Montoya's time was just 0.018 seconds better than that of the younger Schumacher, who had been fastest in Friday's opening qualifying and who ran last in the synchronised session run in torrid heat on Saturday afternoon.

After Montoya's penultimate lap, Ralf Schumacher drove hard to deliver an even better time but had to settle for second place alongside his teammate on the front row.

"I am pleased to be on the front row, especially because I had big understeer in the last two corners, which cost me some time," said Ralf. "Thanks to the team who did an excellent job, since the car wasn’t that perfect yesterday morning or this morning.

"Last year I was a bit unlucky on this track and I hope I ca make up for that disappointing race. Tomorrow the tarmac could be as hot as 55°C and in such conditions anything can happen."