Montoya: There was no grip at all!

The rain hit Spa at just the wrong time for the BMW Williams team during qualifying for the Belgium Grand Prix, leaving Juan Pablo Montoya and Antonia Pizzonia with work to do when the race gets underway tomorrow.

Montoya had looked set to catch the track at a good time as the conditions constantly changed throughout the session, but having left the pits on intermediate tyres the rain started to fall - leaving the Columbian fighting to keep the car on track.

"Bad luck for me in today's qualifying," Montoya said afterwards. "The track was starting to dry out and we decided to use intermediate tyres, like Trulli, Alonso and Coulthard who went out just before me.

"However, on my out lap it started to rain quite hard, which made it very difficult to keep the car on the track and as a result I lost a lot of time. There was no grip at all! It's a shame because in the morning we looked quite competitive in the wet and in pre-qualifying I was the second fastest driver on Michelin tyres. Still, I think we have a very good race car for tomorrow, we have found a good compromise which will hopefully pay off."

An off in the shortened practice session in the morning damaged Pizzonia's car and though the team fixed in time for qualifying he was left struggling down in 14th place.

"My qualifying was disappointing, for sure," he said. "The lack of running this morning didn't help, and I even crashed in the last few minutes. The team did a really good job in putting the car back together in time so that I was able to qualify in my race car. Obviously I'm disappointed, but I'm hoping to have a good race tomorrow. It is possible to overtake here, as it's such a long circuit, so we will see what happens.

While technical director Sam Michael was happy to report that the team had had no mechanical problems, BMW motorsport director Mario Theissen was cursing his luck at the way the session had developed.

"Qualifying was a gamble today, heavily affected by the tyre choice," he said. "The weather was favourable to Renault and they took the pole. Our drivers had bad luck, just like a few others, especially in final qualifying. Now it's all about getting a good race from these two unfavourable starting positions."