Montoya Not Surprised by Ferrari's Pace

Juan Pablo Montoya said on Saturday that Ferrari's dominant performance in qualifying for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix came as no surprise to him ­ despite being hailed as one of the the pre-season title favourites.

Montoya, who drives for Williams-BMW, has been backed heavily for the title this year after his team's tyre manufacturers Michelin appeared to get ahead of the game last season. But World Champion Michael Schumacher finished more than half a second faster than Montoya in the grid-deciding session and he claimed that Bridgestone have found a step forward before the start of the season.

"I think on the basis of the last test we did we knew they [Ferrari] found something new in the tyres and they were going to be very strong," said Montoya. "Most of the testing we did (was) when they had the old car. It was easy to have the upper hand on them and it was clear that Bridgestone was kind of struggling.

"They were doing a lot of tests, and probably found something that gave them a bit of an edge. It's a long season and last year we were struggling from race one. We qualified third this year. But you can't really count anybody in or out. You've got to finish, score the points and see what happens at the end of the year."

Montoya struggled in the opening practice session on Friday but got to grips with his new stunted-nosed FW26 machine in time for the single-lap qualifying sessions on Saturday. Last year he qualified third and finished second in Australia after spinning out of the lead in the closing stages of the race ­ but he believes his car could be good enough to win the race this year.

"I was a bit surprised how many problems we had yesterday with the car (and) to really make it work we had to do a lot of changes," said Montoya. "I'm a lot happier with the car now and I think I have a really good race car."