Ferrari pleased despite Salo spin

The Finn was in the top five and getting closer and closer to his team mate Eddie Irvine until spinning into the gravel early in the afternoon session. He was 5th overall and 0.3s behind Irvine at the time, but had to sit out the last 40 minutes of practice and slumped to 16th. That lost time could cost him dearly this weekend.

Michael Schumacher's regular race engineer Ignazio Lunetta claimed that Salo could have been up with the frontrunners but for the spin.

'Mika did all his running today on one set of tyres,' Lunetta explained. 'He was consistently improving his lap times until he made a small mistake. The situation was not dramatic, but it prevented him from setting a time that would have put him among the leaders.'

Lunetta warned that Salo still needed more time in the car before he could be truly competitive.

'Until today, Mika had done all his testing with the F399 at Fiorano. He still has a lot to learn about the car and the team.

'After many years working with Michael, certainly today was a new experience for me.'