McLaren say there's more to come

With Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen leading the way in both free practice sessions on Friday, Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso overcame minor problems to set the fourth and eighth best times overall.

Hamilton lost track time in the morning session when his engine suffered a precautionary shutdown, while Alonso ran off the track several times in the afternoon as he tried to find the limit.

Team boss Ron Dennis said: "A reasonable Friday practice despite a few minor glitches this morning, but we still made significant steps forward.

"However there is still room for improvement and we will be working very hard overnight to ensure we are in the best possible shape for tomorrow's qualifying."

Alonso, who lies 10 points behind Hamilton in the title standings, was not too discouraged by Ferrari's resurgence though.

"We managed to complete our programme, and we have a good understanding of the Bridgestone Potenza tyres characteristics in these cooler than expected temperatures," said the Spaniard. "We could have been faster today, and there is still a little bit of work to do tomorrow on the set-up.

"However I think we will be stronger over the weekend than we appear today and so I am not too worried about the results so far."

Hamilton added: "This morning was a little frustrating as I missed some track time when the engine protection system came in as a result of the engine running too cool and I stopped on track. Luckily the car was returned with about 45 minutes of the session still to run so I still managed to get quite a few laps in and completed our planned programme in the afternoon session."