Painful qualifying session for McLaren

Team McLaren Mercedes driver Juan Pablo Montoya finished today's qualifying session for the Bahrain Grand Prix in fifth position on the grid with a time of 1m32.164. Kimi Raikkonen will start tomorrow's race from the back of the grid after a right rear suspension failure on his first flying lap which meant that he failed to set a time.

This was the first time all the teams experienced the three-stage knockout system introduced for this year. In the first session Juan Pablo Montoya set a time of 1:33.233 and finished in fifth place and the second session saw him finish with the second fastest time of 1m31.487.

Juan Pablo Montoya "I think we did a good job with the new format, and it ran very smoothly for me. I am a little surprised to finish so far up as we had not been looking good in the earlier sessions when I have been suffering from understeer, but that is what the car could do when it counted. I think we have a good strategy for the race, so we will have to wait and see what will happen tomorrow."

Kimi Raikkonen "There is not much I can say about today. It is very disappointing to not even complete one timed lap as I believe that the team had a good strategy for the new qualifying system, and I could have been amongst the quickest. Although it is far from ideal to start from the back of the grid, there are overtaking opportunities at this track, and I have done this before and still achieved good results. We will just have to see what happens in the race tomorrow."

Ron Dennis "A painful first experience of the new qualifying. Our overall competitiveness is still difficult to judge as the fuel load used for the final qualifying still plays a significant role in respect of race strategy. Juan Pablo's set up is still not perfect and Kimi's car suffered a rear suspension lower wishbone failure which was caused by a manufacturing fault, which, after many thousands of kilometres of testing, is difficult to come to terms with."

Norbert Haug "It is a shame that Kimi suffered from a rear suspension failure. In more than 8000km of testing we have not experienced such a breakdown. We have what we think is a good strategy and a solid basis for a good performance in the race and our speed so far looks OK."