Trulli thrilled with own performance

While his Toyota team-mate Timo Glock and Williams-Toyota duo Kazuki Nakajima and Nico Rosberg struggled to 16th, 17th and 18th, Trulli came within a tenth of a second of reaching Q3 and will start 11th.

The Italian felt this was the car's limit - and that reaching the top ten shoot-out would have been of little consequence.

"I'm really pleased with what I have achieved in qualifying," he said. "If I had got into Q3 we would have been a mile off because we were really off the pace.

"This is a high-speed circuit, a top speed circuit, and we were struggling. The car was reasonable, I was able to put in a very strong quick lap but not enough to get into Q3.

"I'm really happy with my own performance. If you look back at what everyone else with the same car or same engine have done. I can't say more than that."

The Toyota is now generally regarded as one of the weaker engines in the field, and Trulli acknowledged that it had not proved competitive at the high-speed Monza track.

"If you look at the results, the only thing we can say is that it looks like the teams with the Toyota engines have been struggling," he said. "That's a fact. We really have to look into it."