More to come, says Webber

If you'd have told Mark Webber before the start of free practice that he would end the day in eighth position, three places ahead of Michael Schumacher, he wouldn't have believed you. But that is exactly what he did in Minardi's most competitive session of the year, or indeed millennium

At one stage Webber had been as high as sixth, and although the team was running low fuel and in qualifying trim it was still a remarkable performance at arguably the most challenging track in F1. And the Australian knows that there's still more to come from the car.

"We had a really good day today," he said. "We still have some fuel to take out, which is nice, but also Michelin has done a really good job by the looks of it, as well. If we can do something like this in terms of a trouble-free run on Saturday, I would say we could have our best qualifying performance. It's likely to be a different story but I hope we can still do well."

Things went less well for team-mate Alex Yoong and the Malaysian lost a lot of valuable track time after crashing his car on the entry to La Rascasse early in the second session.

"I was just trying a little bit different line and the car just got away under braking," he said. "It was unfortunate, because I really want to make maximum use of the track time available here."