Gascoyne: Ferrari still on top

Gascoyne said that despite McLaren driver Kimi Raikkonen becoming the first man this year to head Michael Schumacher in Sepang earlier today, the state of play between Ferrari and the top Michelin-shod teams is not clear cut.

Raikkonen topped the timesheets in the second practice session of the weekend after Schumacher and Ferrari dominated the opening session.

Gascoyne said: "Certainly, the Bridgestone tyres seem to work very well on the second, third and fourth lap, while we've got good first lap performance on the Michelin and then quite a big drop-off. So our tyres are working in a different way but the field does seem to have closed up in comparison to Melbourne.

"Raikkonen's time (1m34.395s as against Schumacher's morning 1m34.437s) is obviously good, but maybe McLaren has done a bit of a PR run to try and quieten things down, I don't know."

He added that the key to the weekend will be in the differing natures of the rival Bridgestone and Michelin tyres.

"If you look at [Toyota test driver] Ricardo Zonta's run for us, he did a 1m35.8s lap and had traffic on his first lap, so that would have been a low 1:35, and he then was lapping in the 1:37s by the end," explained Gascoyne.

"So the Michelin does drop off and then come back in, whereas the Bridgestone seems to be very stable. What the situation is over an extended run, we'll have to wait and see. But from Toyota's point of view, the gap to BAR and Renault is a lot smaller than it was, which is very pleasing."

Asked whether he thought everyone was still chasing Ferrari, Gascoyne replied: "Between Ferrari, Williams and Renault, I think it's difficult to say. It's not clear cut. But you certainly be brave to lay money against Ferrari."