Button struggles on first day at Imola

The 20-year-old newboy, who became the youngest points scorer in history three days ago, struggled to come to terms with the twisting Imola circuit and wound up with 20th best time as team mate Ralf Schumacher set the ninth fastest time.

Button is looking for a good result this weekend to smooth his path to his first home Grand Prix at Silverstone in two weeks time.

But his day ended sitting on the wall opposite the pits watching the opposition fly past after his Williams-BMW broke down, apparently with a blown engine.

"You are always going to have down days as well as up days in this sport," he said.

"We did quite a lot of set-up work today but I am not where I want to be after first practice. Thankfully it is tomorrow at two o clock after qualifying which counts."

"We have done our homework and hopefully tomorrow I will move up a bit more.

"It's very difficult circuit to learn, very narrow. Something I have not done this year is to use the kerbs but I will have to use them a lot more.

"I should be fine tomorrow."

Schumacher spun into the gravel midway through the session but his time was good enough to keep him ninth.

"Jenson had a struggle today, I'm not sure if it was circuit or set-up," said technical director Patrick Head.

"At the end he was much happier with the car and I think was expecting to go quite a bit better. I think he had an engine problem."