Montoya Laments Tyre Issues

A new track surface at Indianapolis, which has been diamond-grinded, had been expected to dramatically increase tyre wear for the Formula One cars and Montoya duly admitted that he had suffered some tyre dramas over the course of the day.

"The tyre tread was pretty bad," said Montoya, who outpaced teammate Kimi Raikkonen. "I think everybody is probably complaining about the same thing.

"It feels terrible, but you know, it feels terrible and we're fastest. I don't know how everybody else is, but I am looking pretty strong for the weekend. We'll have to wait and see."

Montoya is well aware that the quickest practice time on Friday counts for little, but he is optimistic that he can finally bring an end to the misfortune that has dogged his previous outings at Indy.

"Every year, I've come so close to winning this race, and something has always gone wrong," he said. "So it would be nice to come here once and get a pretty quiet weekend and a good result.

"This year has been a bit of a struggle. I've been very unlucky. Everything that can go wrong has been going wrong. If we could come out of here with a nice party for the guys would be amazing."

Raikkonen, who has emerged as Fernando Alonso's main threat for Championship honours, complained of a clutch problem during the day but was not too unhappy with the fact that McLaren had topped the times.

"I had a small problem with the car," he said. "The clutch wasn't working, but otherwise it was all right. It still goes quite quickly, so that's the main thing. We had a small problem with the clutch, but we can easily fix it for tomorrow."

Speaking about McLaren's domination of the session, Raikkonen said: "Of course, it's good, but it's only the first day. So we need to wait and see. It looks pretty good for us right now. But hopefully tomorrow, we'll be right up there."