Williams loses out in 'weather lottery'

Juan Pablo Montoya drove over the limit in the slippery conditions and paid the price, ending up 17th fastest, while team-mate Ralf Schumacher went 13th quickest. This means the pair will start eighth and fourth, respectively, tomorrow.

"I lost the rear of the car on the asphalt change," said Montoya, "locked the rear tyres at Turn Six and went off track losing quite a bit of time. I obviously lost my flying lap there. The car felt quite bad on the new asphalt in the infield, anyway. Let's hope for some dry running tomorrow."

Williams' chief operating engineer, Sam Michael, offered clues as to the reason for the handling difficulties: "We have a lot of new chassis parts but we are not able to evaluate them under these conditions," he said. "But we hope we can achieve this tomorrow morning."

Ralf Schumacher seemed unconcerned about the team's performance, citing the weather as the main influence. The German went a second quicker than his Colombian team-mate.

"It's very difficult to rate today's times, qualifying was a weather lottery," he said. "Usually I don't dislike driving in wet conditions but on my fast lap the track was extremely slippery after it had again started raining hard a few minutes before. The balance of my car was not right in the slow and medium-speed sectors, but this is something we are going to work on now."