Montoya hopes McLaren strategy pays off

The British squad decided to save both tyres and engines in today's practice sessions, with Montoya completing just an installation lap in the morning while teammate Kimi Raikkonen did not leave his garage at all.

In the afternoon, Montoya did just five laps while the Finn completed four.

They finished well off the pace, but Colombian Montoya is hoping the strategy pays off on Sunday.

"We hope, everybody should be quite competitive here, everybody has probably done the same amount of miles that we have done around this place, so I think it is a little bit wait and see what happens," said Montoya.

"Our approach was quite conservative today and I hope it pays off for the rest of the weekend. We are so limited on miles we just decided to take a conservative approach. We haven't done anything today.

"We did three laps and in three laps you cannot judge your pace on three laps.

Asked about the one-second gap to championship leader Fernando Alonso, Montoya said: "I don't care, we are doing our own thing and I am pretty pleased with what we have done."

The McLaren driver was involved in a bizarre incident today, when he lost the left mirror of his car.

"I didn't take it off. It was coming off so I just gave it a bit of a hand," Montoya said. "Initially I was trying to pull it back in and as I was pulling it and it came out. It is more dangerous when it hits the rear wing and does a bit of damage, but it was okay."