Sir Richard Branson was left a worried man after seeing a tyre come off one of his cars, but finished the day with a smile on his face.

There were naturally a few frowns in the Virgin Racing garage when a wheel nut worked loose on Timo Glock's car during a practice lap, which led to his tyre falling off and rolling along the track.

After Glock toured back to the garage for the remainder of the lap on three wheels, it was discovered there was a fault with the wheel gun as it had failed to sufficiently tighten all the nuts.

The Yorkshire-based team shrugged off that issue, and the tiredness that accounted for the problem as they have worked around the clock these past few days to get the car on track, to emerge the best of the new teams in qualifying for tomorrow's Bahrain Grand Prix.

Glock will start from 19th, marginally quicker than Lotus Racing duo Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen and team-mate Lucas di Grassi, with the quartet all within a second.

It is no surprise Hispania Racing are at the rear, with debutants Bruno Senna 23rd and Karun Chandhok last.

Remarkably, the latter's first lap was in the opening minutes of qualifying after problems throughout practice consigned the Indian to the garage.

British entrepreneur Branson, was upbeat, even though this time last year, after sponsoring the Brawn team, he was drinking champagne after Jenson Button claimed pole in Australia.

"It is obviously a different feeling today, but just as exciting," said Branson.

"The challenge set was to be number one of the new teams, and in qualifying they pulled that off, although we'll have to see what happens tomorrow.

"But considering they've had a few months to get this far, I think they've done tremendously well, and now we're a proper racing team which is very exciting.

"Early on was a worry when the wheel came off. It's not something you want to happen with high-speed racing cars.

"But the guys have had 60 hours with no sleep. It was one of those things that happens when people are really tired, but all was well in the end.

"We are bang on track with our expectations. The question now is, will our cars be there at the end of the race? We will wait and see."

Fellow airline owner Tony Fernandes, who runs AirAsia and is team principal of Lotus Racing, declared himself "very, very happy" in the wake of his marque's debut qualifying.

He added: "It was fantastic to see Lotus back on the grid after a 16-year absence.

"With the potential for so many things to have gone wrong, it's just great to have finished our first qualifying session.

"Jarno broke the two-minute mark (for the 6.299km track) and that's a great achievement in itself."

Like the Virgin mechanics, Hispania racing team principal Colin Kolles has revealed his have also burned the midnight oil of late.

"Our mechanics and engineers have worked miracles, having been awake for 38 hours preparing for our first outing," said Kolles.

"Having never run the car before this weekend we have had the usual new car technical challenges which we would normally have solved during pre-season testing.

"But we are determined to work through this usual process as fast as possible, even though it may well be in the public eye.

"In a way, we are treating this race as a test session and this is a great success for the entire team to even be here with both cars running."