Practice 1: Schuey mighty

Yes it's only the first session, and yes it doesn't count for a great deal as teams spend most of Friday working through tyre evaluation programmes, but nevertheless Schumacher set his 1m15.658s time on his first flying lap, dipping under BAR-Honda test driver Anthony Davidson's benchmark by nearly a second.

It's becoming the norm for Davidson and Ricardo Zonta, F1's fastest Friday testers to be buried deep in the top six and the same was true this morning. The Englishman impressed again, ending the session third fastest in his newly liveried black BAR. Toyota's test driver Zonta was fourth fastest.

One of the pre-race favourites, Jenson Button was fifth fastest, nearly one and a half seconds adrift of the mark while Ralf Schumacher, an early pace-setter in the hour-long session, was sixth.

Local hero Fernando Alonso was seventh fastest in the first of the Renaults ahead of Button's BAR team-mate Takuma Sato and Toyota's Olivier Panis. McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen rounded out the top ten.