Positive signs for Jordan

It is all but impossible to make too much out of teams' and drivers' relative performances on Fridays, due to the wide variation in fuel levels. Fisichella chose to run heavy and work on a race set-up, so was far from dismayed to be only 17th quickest.

"Not a bad day, considering I was running with lots of fuel and didn't do a single lap on low fuel," he ventured. "There is still work to do in finding the best set-up, as at the moment we have a lot of understeer in slow corners and graining with new tyres. It will be difficult to be in the top 10 but that is our target."

Team-mate Takuma Sato had a problem in the first session when an electrical failure caused his car to stop on track. However, the team's director of race and test engineering, Gary Anderson, was happy with the amount of work the team was able to do over the two one-hour sessions.

"That was not too bad," he said. "We have been able to do the work required to try and understand the car for qualifying and the race. Our focus was on race work, but a lot of people seemed to be running with lower fuel. As always, we've got work to do but no dramas."