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Practice 1: Pizzonia beats the rain

Antonio Pizzonia will want to frame the timesheet from the first hour of free practice for the Canadian Grand Prix. It showed the Brazilian Jaguar driver outpaced Monaco winner Juan Pablo Montoya and five-times world champion Michael Schumacher by over half a second, but the weather conditions had a lot to do with it

Pizzonia was straight out of the blocks in the session, and worked straight down into the 1m16s bracket. His best effort, 1m16.621s, would stand as the best of the day so far, as the threatening rain clouds finally dropped their contents on the track about 10 minutes into the session.

Juan Pablo Montoya was next up for Williams, managing a 1m17.216s that was a tenth quicker than Michael Schumacher of Ferrari. Mark Webber made sure it was a great session for Jaguar with the fourth fastest time, while Olivier Panis gave Toyota a rare glimmer of hope with the fifth quickest lap.

The second Williams of Ralf Schumacher was next up, ahead of the impressive Ralph Firman of Jordan. World championship leader Kimi Raikkonen was eighth fastest, ahead of McLaren team-mate David Coulthard, who went off at the first corner in the rain but was able to rejoin, and the second Ferrari of Rubens Barrichello.

Of the rest, Justin Wilson was a superb 12th fastest for Minardi, while the returning Jenson Button didn't manage any real dry running in his BAR and was 18th fastest as a result, just ahead of the two Renaults.

The track was soaked by the time the session concluded, so the jury is out on whether it will dry in time for first qualifying. What is clear, however, is that the teams who enjoyed two hours of dry private testing have a huge advantage in terms of set-up and knowledge of track conditions.

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