Irvine spins but still sets best practice time

Irvine went for a fast time right at the end of the session but lost it and span off into the gravel trap.

Mika Hakkinen stayed in the pits until the last few minutes of the session, and then had a scary incident when Tora Takagi pulled out of the Arrows garage right in front of him.

Having avoided a pit lane collision, Hakkinen did a handful of laps and immediately went within 0.4s of the Ferrari's, who had been on track for most of the session.

The Jordans also played it cool, Frentzen and Hill a promising fourth and fifth quickest.

David Coulthard pushed pretty hard but lined up sixth, while the Saubers looked genuinely quick.

Alesi and Diniz were seventh and eighth at the end, the latter escaping a huge sideways moment at the fastest part of the course.

Williams struggled. Alex Zanardi did more laps than anyone else but couldn't better 17th, suggesting he may have been running a heavy fuel load to test race set-ups.

Team mate Ralf Schumacher hit the gravel on his very first lap but got back to the pits intact and eventually went 16th quickest.

Jacques Villeneuve got into the top 10, but BAR team mate Mika Salo never got out again after his early engine failure, meaning he failed to set a time.

Practice times from first session