Free Practice 3: DC pips Ferrari as pace hots up

After a relatively sedate start to the weekend, the grid upped its collective pace today: Coulthard's time was 0.583s under the 2000 pole time, while the Ferraris of Rubens Barrichello (1m37.004s) and Michael Schumacher (1m37.320s) were both also comfortably inside the benchmark from five months ago.

Bridgestone still appeared to have the upper hand in the preliminary skirmishes for round two of the tyre war with Michelin: Bridgestone-shod machines filled the top six places, with Heinz-Harald Frentzen fourth for Jordan-Honda, Mika Hakkinen fifth for McLaren and Olivier Panis best of the BARs in sixth.

First of the Michelin runners was Eddie Irvine's Jaguar in seventh, setting a time of 1m38.064s. As team boss Bobby Rahal continues to turn the psychological screw to get his drivers to perform, the Ulsterman was top dog on the French rubber for the third session in a row.

Jarno Trulli's Jordan, Ralf Schumacher's Williams (second best Michelin car) and Nick Heidfeld's Sauber completed the top 10, with Jacques Villeneuve's BAR and Juan Pablo Montoya's Williams in 11th and 12th.

For Montoya, it was a triumph of sorts: the Colombian had failed to set a representative lap on Friday after a recurring fuel pick-up problem scuppered both sessions. But with the BMW engine finally getting the juice it needed, the former Champ Car ace was a revelation on his first ever runs at Sepang.

Fernando Alonso was again impressive for European Minardi. The Spaniard, who spent yesterday learning the circuit, hauled his car round in 1m40.667s, but ahead of both Prosts and both Benettons.

In fact, Alonso's team mate Tarso Marques was the only driver to prevent Benetton from claiming the whole of the back row for its own. Jenson Button was 21st, with team mate Giancarlo Fisichella 20th as Renault's radical, wide-angle V10 continues its painful gestation.

For full results click here.