Verstappen Hampered by Engine Problem

Dutchman Jos Verstappen will be the first man to go out in tomorrow's final qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix after failing to set a time in today's opening session.

The Minardi driver's engine on his car failed to fire up cleanly prior to his qualifying run and Verstappen could not even complete his warm-up lap.

"The morning test session went well enough, but then we were slower in the official practice session, so we went back on our set-up and it would therefore have been interesting to see how we would have gone in qualifying this afternoon," said Verstappen.

"Unfortunately, when we started the engine on my car for the qualifying run, it simply wouldn't run properly. It is obviously very disappointing."

Verstappen's teammate Nicolas Kiesa had a better qualifying despite a dismal start to his day. The Dane rookie was hit by mechanical problems both in the testing and practice sessions, and eventually finished in 18th position in qualifying.

"Unfortunately, we had so many difficulties this morning, I only managed 11 laps, and virtually every one of those was interrupted by a problem," said Kiesa. "In the following one-hour session, I only managed two laps before the gearbox developed a fault.

"I went into qualifying this afternoon with just a very small number of laps under my belt, and none of them at anything like optimum performance. Anyway, I hope the team has got rid of all its bad luck today and that things improve significantly tomorrow."