Qualifying: Montoya pulls big one out

Montoya's lap of 1m18.998s - the only sub-1m19s of the weekend - came during a frantic last few minutes of a qualifying session that took 20 minutes to get going. The Colombian now faces the tricky task of finally converting the best starting position into a race win, but he was surprised to have put one over Ferrari in qualifying in any case.

"We made a lot of small changes and they all came good," said Montoya. "The balance was really good, but I don't really know where that time came from. We have to see what happens tomorrow. We haven't had the pace in races on used tyres so far this year, but we'll see."

Just four hundredths separated the top three and Ralf Schumacher was just a couple of tenths further back in fourth. The McLarens of Kimi Raikkonen and David Coulthard were next up, but over a second away from pole. The pair swapped places throughout the session, but Raikkonen improved during the final seconds to make it 6:4 in qualifying this year in the Finn's favour.

"The session was quite clean, although I had some traffic on my best lap," said Coulthard. "We were never going to be in the top four, so it was just a case of who would be quicker between me and Kimi. If the top four all finish tomorrow we'll be fighting for a point, if there are some retirements we might get more."

Jarno Trulli headed up the best of the rest in seventh, but it was not a good day for team-mate Jenson Button. The Englishman suffered a massive engine blow on his first flying lap and had to sprint back to the pits and jump in the spare car, which was fortunately set-up for him. However, in a very tightly contested midfield battle he ended up a slightly disappointing 12th.

Jordan's Giancarlo Fisichella also had to use the spare after the engine cut out in his car. The Italian was left with just a few minutes to qualify and will start from a disappointing 18th, four spots behind team-mate Takuma Sato, who needed a replacement nose cone midway through the session.

Mika Salo turned Toyota's weekend around with a great effort to take eighth, but Allan McNish continued to struggle, and starts 15th. Jacques Villeneuve did well to end the session as the quickest non-Ferrari Bridgestone runner in ninth, just fractions ahead of the Saubers of Nick Heidfeld and Felipe Massa.

It was a nightmare session for Jaguar, with its revised R3 failing to improve the team fortunes at all. Eddie Irvine starts from 19th, while Pedro de la Rosa had to switch to the spare after his race chassis developed a water leak and only just made the field with a last ditch effort.

However, Alex Yoong could not even manage that. The Malaysian was more than two seconds slower than Mark Webber and missed the 107 percent mark by over two tenths. The team will appeal, but it looks likely that tomorrow's race will feature just 21 cars.

It is true that it only takes two cars to make a race, so Williams will need to get a handle on its race tyre wear if Montoya and Ralf are to stop Ferrari repeating its Nurburgring display.