Friday team by team: Part 1

Made good use of a new upgraded 053 evolution engine to set the pace in the first session before Kimi Raikkonen pipped Rubens Barrichello and Michael Schumacher in the closing stages of the second session. Last week's major test at Monza meant the team spent the day fine-tuning its set-up and comparing data. Although Schumacher ran off the track once, the day was otherwise incident free.

MICHAEL SCHUMACHER: "It is always nice to race in front of our tifosi and so I am happy to be back at Monza again after two days of testing last week."

RUBENS BARRICHELLO: "The fight for first place this weekend will be decided by thousandths of a second. From what we have seen today, we seem to be competitive."



Williams' day was punctuated by a high-speed crash suffered by Antonio Pizzonia, who was pitched off the track when his front left brake disc failed on the 200mph approach to Parabolica. Before then the team had worked through set-up fine tuning and tyre evaluations, with Pizzonia ending up fifth overall and Juan Pablo Montoya seventh.

ANTONIO PIZZONIA: "The grip was not ideal today, especially in the first session, because the track was quite dirty but we had some good running here last week during three days of testing."

JUAN PABLO MONTOYA: "I am reasonably happy with the balance of my car. The data we collected in last week's test is proving very useful as well as the new aero parts that we have brought to Monza."



Another encouraging day for the revitalised McLaren team as Kimi Raikkonen topped the times in the second session. The new wider nose, introduced to support a new front wing, appeared to be working well, although David Coulthard had a difficult time to end up 10th overall.

KIMI RAIKKONEN: "The car feels reasonably good and my quick lap was not perfect as I was sliding a little bit more than expected. However, we will work on fixing that in time for qualifying."

DAVID COULTHARD: "We spent today adjusting the cars to the conditions we have this weekend. As always it is early days and as a result I am not making any predictions. We will continue to focus on our planned programme and then get excited if we are still top of the time sheets after qualifying."





Followed the example of other teams and ran a reduced Friday programme because of the mileage completed in testing at Monza last week. Fernando Alonso was not happy with the set-up of his car while Jarno Trulli still struggled to find a balance despite the team giving him a brand new chassis from this race.

FERNANDO ALONSO: "We need to improve the car for tomorrow: the R24 lacks grip at the moment and it feels very slippery on the circuit. When you are running with low downforce levels like we do here, you need to be able to drive with precision and today I was struggling to find my braking points."

JARNO TRULLI: "I struggled to find a good balance today: the car was oversteering and the track conditions were not great, with low levels of grip. We have a few small problems to solve on the car for tomorrow."



Another strong performance from Anthony Davidson, in his re-liveried BAR, saw him end the two sessions third and eighth overall. Jenson Button and Takuma Sato were relatively happy with their performances, as the team re-introduced a modified version of the Front Torque Transfer system that had been banned at the German Grand Prix.

JENSON BUTTON: "My lap on new tyres was pretty average so I feel this is a good start considering that we have tomorrow to focus on set-up. The times of the top six cars are very close, so it's still quite early in the weekend to make any predictions."

TAKUMA SATO: "This is a good start to the weekend. We came from testing with a lot of positive information and put in a competitive performance today."

ANTHONY DAVIDSON: "I'm really happy with my performance today and we gathered lots of useful data for the rest of the weekend, which will make our tyre choice much easier."