Fisichella baffled by grip issues

The Italian struggled for grip both in the morning and the afternoon sessions, finishing at the bottom of the times.

Fisichella admitted the team were still unsure about the cause of his problems.

"The whole day we struggled with the grip, when it was dry or wetter," said the Italian. "We seem to have problems in particular with graining, even after a couple of laps. My speed on the straight is also relatively low, which means we aren't able to take advantage of the long straight.

"At the moment we don't know why or what the problem is but we have another practice tomorrow before qualifying so we'll try and get it better for that."

Teammate Adrian Sutil had a better day, the German finishing over two tenths ahead of Fisichella in 19th position.

"We didn't have any problems today so we could get through our schedule as planned," said Sutil. "I was quite happy with my performance and we can see how the tyres are working now.

"The soft ones seem to be better compared to the medium tyre at the moment. We'll study the data and work on it for tomorrow."