Free practice 4: Montoya smashes the status quo

The Colombian's Michelin-shod Williams-BMW blasted around the bumpy Interlagos track in 1m13.963s - 0.148s below the 2000 pole time - after the rookie finally got his head around the track's twisty, but all-important second sector.

Before practice started yesterday (Friday), the former Champ Car ace had only seen the track as a computer game. Already, the contrasts between the form of Montoya and the last recruit the Grove-based team took from Champ Cars. Alex Zanardi back in 1999, could not be more marked.

Second-placed Mika Hakkinen also went below the 2000 pole as he set a fastest lap of 1m14.108s. The Finn's McLaren team mate David Coulthard and Williams-BMW's Ralf Schumacher took third and fourth to oust both Ferraris from the top four - a first for the 2001 season.

But with fifth-placed Michael Schumacher barely taking even a passing interest in the final session before this afternoon's all-important single-hour of qualifying, one suspects that the Italian team has a little more up its sleeve for when it genuinely counts.

His team mate Rubens Barrichello finished the session seventh overall, edged by the Jordan-Honda of Heinz-Harald Frentzen. But the German's mechanics have a busy couple of hours ahead after the EJ11's V10 went bang in big style in the closing seconds of the session.

Kimi Raikkonen, another first-timer at Interlagos, finished an excellent eighth for Sauber, ahead of Olivier Panis's BAR-Honda and the second Sauber of Nick Heidfeld.

Panis's team mate Jacques Villeneuve was a disappointing 16th after stopping out on the circuit with mechanical gremlins and he was joined at the very end of the session by Eddie Irvine, who parked his Jaguar with a suspected empty fuel tank. Nevertheless, Irvine finished the session 12th, just behind Jarno Trulli's Jordan, and 0.061s ahead of Big Cat team mate Luciano Burti.

Jean Alesi gave Prost some hope as he put his Ferrari-engined AP04 14th fastest, ahead of Jos Verstappen in the best of the Arrows-AMTs.

Jenson Button got a psychological boost - but only a relative one - when he put his Benetton-Renault ahead of team mate Giancarlo Fisichella. But to maintain perspective, the pair finished the session 19th and 20th, bettering only the Minardis.

A single hour of qualifying determines the Brazilian GP grid and kicks off at 1700 BST (1300 Brazilian time).

For full results from free practice 4, click here.