Fisichella optimistic after strong practice

The Italian sat out the morning session while the team attended to a technical problem with his race chassis, but completed 22 laps in the afternoon and ended up in the 'best of the rest' position, 0.782 seconds off the pace.

"I think we are in good shape after our first day of work here," said Fisichella. "The circuit was improving all the time this afternoon, but we made good progress with the set-up as well, and I think we were quite competitive."

Heikki Kovalainen was 12th fastest in the second Renault as he learnt the Interlagos track.

Chief race engineer Alan Permane said the team felt that Fisichella would not miss much if they used the damp morning session to attend to his car.

"Given the wet weather this morning, we decided to use the session to resolve a small problem with Giancarlo's race chassis, to avoid any disruption to our qualifying preparation tomorrow morning," he said.

"We did so successfully, and he then did a very good job to run so competitively this afternoon.

"Heikki learned the track quickly, and ran strongly in both wet and dry conditions. The car seems to be performing well here, and we have made a promising start to the weekend."

Fisichella was also positive about the resurfacing work that has been carried out at the notoriously bumpy Brazilian GP venue.

"They have done a fantastic job with the resurfacing work, and the circuit is much better to drive now," he said. "The grip level was a bit low in the wet, but this afternoon it felt very good."