However, after the chequered flag had fallen, Honda's Rubens Barrichello came through only 0.05 seconds faster, bumping Fisichella straight back into the drop zone.

"Just five hundredths away from Q2, it was very close!" Fisi said.

"I am a little disappointed with not getting there, but I did my best and did a fantastic lap.

"Let's say it's very encouragaing - just five hundredths from the top 16 and Q2, and just under a second from the quickest lap time of that session - it is very promising for the future."

Fisichella will therefore line up 17th, behind the Williams of Nico Rosberg.

His time in Q1 was less than a second slower than the fastest man in the session, Jarno Trulli. Chief technical officer, Mike Gascoyne said "It is also frustrating to have been within a second of the quickest time in the first session and to still be 17th on the grid, but that shows just how close and exciting Formula One is at the moment."

On the other side of the Force India garage, Adrian Sutil had a less easy time of it. The German struggled to find a balance on the softer tyres, and subsequently only managed to set the 21st fastest time, in between the two Super Aguris.

"It was not a good qualifying, but to be honest I was expecting this as we had not had a great practice in the morning", he commented.

"We had problems again trying to get the soft tyres to work, my car is just not behaving how it should be with them and I even tried a hard set.

"The car felt much better but for sure with them I can't race the other cars."

Sutil will line up 20th on the grid after Nakajima takes his grid penalty for hitting Kubica in Australia.

Link to qualifying times at GPUpdate.net. (External site - please not we cannot be held responsible for content of external websites)

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