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 1:32.164. 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 1:31.487.

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."