Williams targets race pace

Montoya, the man who has looked most likely to beat Ferrari this year, despite Jenson Button's recent rise in form, knew before he set out on his qualifying lap that he could not compete for pole position. The Colombian was quickest in pre-qualifying but switched to a fresh set of tyres and re-fuelled for qualifying which lost him some pace.

"I am very pleased with today's result even if we did not equal the pre-qualifying session's positions as we were on a different fuel level," said Montoya, "we have an excellent race car and this is what matters.

"We were able to improve the car from yesterday and we are now in a good position to start the race. Jenson put in a very good lap and also BAR and Honda have given him a better car with a better engine, this weekend. When I saw Jenson's time I thought: what time is Michael Schumacher then going to set? It was an exciting qualifying!

This is the first time that Schumacher has been outqualified by Montoya at Imola and the German was philosophical about his performance: "On one hand I am not unhappy because I know I have made the most out of the car, but on the other hand we were struggling with a couple of minor problems throughout the weekend and could not get rid of them completely. However I am pretty confident for the race as I believe my car is very well prepared."

WilliamsF1 chief operations engineer Sam Michael summed up: "We have made a couple of changes overnight which improved the balance of the cars for today. We have a good race set-up on both cars, so we are looking forward to tomorrow's race."