Free practice 1: Schumacher cleans up

Both Ferrari drivers played it cool in the opening minutes of the hour-long session, running an installation lap at the start, then sitting tight for 30 minutes before venturing out onto an Interlagos circuit 'Hoovered' clean by the rest of the field.

Schumacher climbed to the top of the time sheets with a 1m17.188s lap with 23 minutes to go, but it was a final five frenetic minutes when the representative laps began to be reeled off. Hakkinen banged in his best lap of 1m16.882s with three minutes remaining, but was almost immediately bettered by Schumacher's session-topper.

Local hero Rubens Barrichello put his Ferrari third fastest on 1m16.994s, with David Coulthard's 1m17.736s best lap completing a Ferrari/McLaren lock-out of the first two rows.

But with so much dust on the racing line, it's too early to say if the tyre war will lead to lap record-smashing speeds obver the course of the next three days. Yes, the times will be faster than 2000, but by how much? At the moment, Schumacher's 1m14.755s lap record and Hakkinen's 1m14.111s qualifying record seem some way off - to equal them, then find another two seconds or so, as was the case in Australia and Malaysia, may be a tall order on the bumpy Interlagos track.

One other question still to be answered is whether McLaren has cured the front-end grip problem that hampered it so much in Malaysia. A spin for Hakkinen mid-way through the session was probably due to dirt, not a lack of grip, and the jury's out.

Fifth was BAR-Honda's Olivier Panis, ahead of the best of the Michelin runners: Eddie Irvine and Brazilian Luciano Burti in a six-seven formation for Jaguar Racing and rookie Juan Pablo Montoya in eighth for Williams-BMW. It was an impressive showing by the Colombian on his first taste of the track, but with Ralf Schumacher confined to the pits for much of the session with a gear box problem, he lacked a true benchmark.

Nick Heidfeld's Sauber and the Jordan of Jarno Trulli completed the top 10, with Brazilian rookie Enrique Bernoldi a brilliant 11th for Arrows and another rookie, Sauber's Kimi Raikkonen, in 12th.

Jean Alesi posted 14th for Prost, but the real excitement for the French team came when a remote-controlled TV camera fell from its rail and into the team's pit, narrowly avoiding mechanics and photographers. After last year's qualifying fiasco, when falling advertising hoardings caused the session to be stopped, it seems the errant camera was merely upholding a Brazilian tradition.

Tarso Marques, the fourth and final Brazilian in the 22-car field, was an excellent - and somewhat surprising - 16th for Minardi, beating both Benetton-Renaults among others.

For full Practice Session 1 results, click here.