Myriad problems thwart JPM

Montoya was powerless to stop his Spanish rival from zooming past him on the grass at the start, but tried a daring late braking manoeuvre at Turn 1 to attempt to regain the position. He ran wide onto the grass, losing several places in the process, and spent the rest of the race battling to regain position. He eventually finished fifth, one spot behind his team-mate.

"I didn't take advantage of my third place on the grid, since right after the start I was trying to defend my position from Alonso and I went off track, losing four places," he said. "After that, I spent the rest of my race trying to find the right moment to overtake the cars in front of me but that was no easy job, since the balance of my car wasn't ideal and on top of that I had a lot of tyre graining."

Montoya passed Jaguar's Mark Webber, team-mate Ralf Schumacher, Renault's Jarno Trulli and BAR's Jenson Button with some excellent moves in the race, but dropped behind Schumacher once again due to some tardy pitstops.

Ralf said: "I cannot be happy with today's result, even if, after all, I have made up four places from my starting position and I have collected some points for the team. Worrying is the fact that, at this race, we are missing one second from Ferrari, which I didn't expect. I believe this is down mainly to the design of their car as well as some tyre graining from us, which we have to overcome."