Rubens blames traffic for quali disaster.

Rubens Barrichello failed to make it through the first round of qualifying in Australia, and then had to sit and watch in frustration as team-mate Jenson Button put the sister Honda on pole position.

Barrichello's day began to go wrong when he went out relatively late in the first session, and then caught a red flag on his out lap. He had to come straight back to the pits but, because the track had been cleared, the action restarted almost immediately. As a result, he was actually worse off than five drivers who had not gone out at all, but were able to get to the end of the pit-lane with warm tyres and head straight out at the restart.

Short of time, and eager to save new tyres, the team sent Rubens back out on the same set of Michelins. He had enough time for three flying laps, but his best - set on the second - saw him bounced out in 17th. He will actually start 16th, after Jacques Villeneuve took an engine change penalty, but that was of little consolation to the Brazilian, who struggled to adapt to his new mounts in the opening two rounds of the season.

"It was traffic, as simple as that," Barrichello explained, to Crash.net, "I was unlucky for the fact that I went out and it was red-flagged, as I came in and had no chance of changing the tyres. I went back out on the same set and then I had traffic for two laps. The tyres cooled down and it was away from me.

"We had one or two minutes when I came back in, and we took the decision to stick to the same tyres. There was no-one to blame apart from the traffic. The car is competitive enough here to qualify on the first row but, if you have traffic, it goes away from you."

Barrichello also admitted that he hadn't been helped by going out so late in the session.

"That was one of our decisions - and one that probably we need to review," he sighed.

The Brazilian openly admits that he is still struggling to adapt to the Honda, which is very different from the Ferrari he was so used to driving.

"I'm still having to adapt to the traction, and also to the brakes," he revealed, "But, having said that, that was the problem of Malaysia, lack of competitiveness, not the problem here. Here, it's another one. I might not have the pace of Jenson, but I'm not far behind.

"Today was just one of those days. It's a bad period for me, actually - for so long, I've been out of the top ten and, for sure, we have a car that can be on the top ten quite easily. I'm coping better, but I'm having to adapt, and that's why it is better. The team are doing their best efforts to come close to what I want."