Davidson too fast too soon!

Leaving the pits on Friday morning for the first time as a Grand Prix driver, Davidson recorded 63.3kmh against a pit lane speed limit of 60kmh and it was not long before a stewards' bulletin broke the news of his penalty.

On the circuit Davidson completed 47 laps over the two one-hour sessions, familiarising himself with the track. He stopped shortly before the end of the first session with a transmission problem, but was back out for the second.

Michael Schumacher topped the sessions with a 1m16.346s best lap, which made a theoretical 107% time at this stage, 1m21.690s. Davidson's 1m19.490s was not only within that, it was also 0.1s better than his KL Minardi Asiatech team-mate Mark Webber could manage.

That bodes very well for the 23-year-old Briton's chances of qualifying for the race.

"It was quite dusty in the beginning and it didn't improve a lot either," said Davidson. "You had the added problem of getting out of people's way and getting on the marbles. But it was good enough for me, the session went quite well."