Free practice 2: McLaren fight back

Coulthard narrowly avoided disaster when he spun into the gravel at Turn 14 on his first flying lap. Fortunately, he managed to keep the engine running and slowly excavated his car from the kitty litter. It was a while before he took to the track again, but a lap of 1m38.038s moved the Scot into second spot.

Raikkonen was on the pace right from the off, becoming the first and only driver to break into the 1m37s bracket. Rival teams suggested the Finn was running low fuel. The McLaren newboy's aggressive style looks suited to the Sepang track, although his MP4-17 did swap ends on his final lap.

As in the first session Michael Schumacher also spun, and once again he performed a perfect spin turn to get his Ferrari facing the right way. The world champion racked up the laps during the session, improving his time by a couple of tenths and there's clearly a lot more to come.

Team mate Rubens Barrichello improved his time early on, but he dropped down the order after his car stopped with 15 minutes remaining. He was back in seventh in the end.

Ralf Schumacher also had a harmless spin in his Williams, and the German was fourth quickest. His first sector time was way quicker than anyone bar team-mate Juan Pablo Montoya, and once again their BMW power is giving them a top speed advantage.

The session's surprise package was Toyota, with Mika Salo a very creditable fifth, ahead of Montoya. The TF102 also displayed a strong top speed with Allan McNish up in 11th.

Jenson Button and Jarno Trulli were ninth and 10th for Renault and Nick Heidfeld rounded out the top 10. The session was barely a minute old when Mark Webber suffered an engine failure, his Asiatech belching a tell-tale plume of smoke on his out lap.

Midway through the hour Enrique Bernoldi blotted his copybook with a spin on the way into Turn 11. Following him was fellow Brazilian Felipe Massa, who went across the gravel trap in sympathy, but stopped just short of making contact with the barrier.

Jaguar have a new floor, struts and barge boards on the R3 this weekend and Pedro de la Rosa was a better than expected 12th. Without the new bits team-mate Eddie Irvine could do no better than 20th, ahead of only Massa and the luckless Mark Webber (click here for separate story).

For full results click here.