Montoya in third for Australian GP Grid

In the post qualifying press conference Juan Pablo spoke of how his car had struggled in the earlier Saturday practice sessions. But after the team fixed the problem with his car he was able to set a competitive time come qualifying.

Juan Pablo said: "It was alright. In the warm-up I had a couple of scares in turn one and I did two laps and I went off twice. I came in and I said what have you done to the car. It had become basically undriveable. And we had a look and found the problem and we changed it and then I took it a bit easy through the first corner because I didn’t want to go off there and apart from that I had a bit of understeer at high speed, but it was pretty good and I think the guys in the team did a fantastic job .... so, for me, it is pretty interesting and it should be a pretty good race tomorrow with car being very consistent."

As for his views of the new FW25 Juan Pablo admitted that there was still work to be done on the car but that he was committed to the new car.

Juan Pablo added: "I'm really behind the FW25 and I believe in the car. After all I left both McLaren drivers behind and get really close to the Ferraris.

"Of course, we have to continue to work on it", he said, but at the same time he knows that "the car has clearly improved during the winter."

The weekend so far for Juan Pablo seems to have been one of improvement so if he can take this trend into the race on Sunday he may be in for a good result.

He did indicate that the team had been running the FW25 with a lot of fuel onboard which should help come the race. Juan Pablo said: "This morning the car was really good, we did very good overnight with the car. This morning it was very consistent and competitive with a lot of fuel and it was good."

As for his views on the new qualifying format Juan Pablo was happy with it but recognised the fact that on any day you could get things very wrong and end up down the grid.

When questioned on the new format he said: It’s good. I am sure sometime you are going to blow it and be 15th on the grid. Look at Kimi, it happened to Kimi today. It could happen to anybody. But I think it’s good. You’ve really got to get the best out of yourself in one lap."

He added later on in the interview: "I think it’s much better on Saturday, but I think Friday is boring because after the first five cars run, everyone goes slower. Unless Michael or Rubens breaks down, they would be last or one of the last cars to go in Malaysia would make it interesting, but apart from that, it’s just where they queue.

"Qualifying is completely different because you’ve got a lot of fuel on board, so in a way it’s a big compromise as to what the car is going to do on low fuel as opposed to high fuel, so that’s a compromise. I think something that makes it quite interesting is that you’ve got to plan the race before you qualify. We could have planned the race to start tenth, but I’m third.

They’ve already decided when they’re going to stop and we’ve already decided when we’re going to stop and that’s going to make it quite interesting in the race, because you got to wait and see what everybody does but it’s going to make it quite a lot more exciting."

There was an amusing moment in the interview when Michael Schumacher was asked about him running the updated 2002 model Ferrari. Michael was asked: "And Michael, there is still life in the old Ferrari yet?"

Before Michael could reply Juan Pablo responded by saying: "Tell me about it!" The fact that the 2002 model Ferrari is still able to set very competitive times against its 2003 rivals appeared to be a frustrating thing for Juan Pablo.

When questioned as to whether the WilliamsF1 team had been conservative in their approach on Friday, and if they had changed on Saturday Juan Pablo said: "A little bit. You know, you try to find solutions and we did. Yesterday we were based on what we went on in testing and it didn’t seem to work well, so we changed everything and it was good."

It looks very much like Juan Pablo is committed to getting the new FW25 to work, rather than simply complain about its poor performance.