The Pole, whose BMW Sauber team-mate Nick Heidfeld could only manage 11th on the grid, told the BBC his final run was compromised by dust left on the track from third-placed Nico Rosberg. Prior to that, Kubica said he had been optimistic.
“I did a very good run in Q2 which got me already easy into Q3, that’s why in Q3 we were quite confident,” he explained.
“But in the last run, when I went out on new tyres, Nico [Rosberg] went wide at Turn 14 and he put a lot of dust on the track. I lost out their massively, my tyres were dirty and the next two or three corners were a disaster unfortunately.”
The Krakow-born driver acknowledged, however, that the Brawn GP cars were too fast to catch.
”But anyway I think Brawn was impossible to catch,” he said.
Unlike his team-mate Nick Heidfeld, Kubica is not carrying KERS this weekend. KERS is suspected to bring a significant performance advantage in qualifying, and so the inversion of BMW’s drivers is perhaps representative of mechanical gremlins on Heidfeld’s car.