Coulthard Rues Lack of Pace

After the team scored points with some strong performances in the opening three races of the year, Coulthard and Liuzzi could manage no better than 16th and 21st fastest respectively in practice at Imola - with third driver Christian Klien unable to make use of his extra engine power to set the 18th best time.

But worst of all for the team was the fact that none of the team's drivers had any major complaint about the car's handling - meaning that there is no obvious area for the team to focus on to make improvements.

"We did a normal race programme working on tyre choice and on what should be done on race fuels," explained Coulthard. "This obviously gives us an indication on where we are in comparison to the quickest cars and what the true picture is. But the car does not feel too bad here - it just isn't that quick."

Liuzzi said: "Today went quite well. It was important to make as many laps of the track and we did plenty, working on the tyre choice for tomorrow.

"We finished our full programme which was pretty good, but it is hard to compare our performance as, on Fridays, you never know what fuel loads the others are running, so we have to wait for tomorrow."

Red Bull's technical director Gunther Steiner added: "Today's  session  was  okay overall.  We  did  everything  we  wanted  to  do,  but  it  is  hard  to draw  any conclusion. Basically the problem is that we are too slow.

"At the moment we have to think what we want to do for tomorrow to improve. We changed the aero balance and Christian tested the different damper and tyre specifications. David worked on balance and aero changes as well as the mechanical set-up. Tonio also worked on tyre choice."