Montoya to T-car, escapes grid penalty.

Juan Pablo Montoya's Imola weekend has been seriously compromised by a fuel system fault that struck the Colombian during Saturday morning's practice session.

Montoya did not complete a flying lap in the crucial last hour, and will now have to go into qualifying at the wheel of the McLaren T-car, which has not run at all this weekend. However, his race engine will be swapped over, so he will not face a ten-place penalty on the grid.

Montoya's race car was a brand new chassis that had not turned a wheel before Friday and, while it got through its first day without trouble, gremlins are not unknown in newly built-up cars. The complexity of the fuel system meant that it was too risky to attempt to trace the fault before qualifying, especially with no guarantee of finding it. However, a last minute switch to the T-car, without an engine swap, would have been very expensive.

"Juan reported a misfire after leaving the pits," Martin Whitmarsh told Crash.net, "It was caused by a lack of fuel pressure at high demand - in other words, in seventh gear. The electronics seem okay, so it might be the mechanical fuel pump. This is a new chassis, with a new fuel system. Historically, we would run a new car at a test before bringing it to a race, but this time we didn't.

"Occasionally, you get some infant mortality in a component but, at the moment, we can't see anything. Given the time available, we're switching to the T-car."