Practice 2: Barrichello heads Schuey

The Brazilian, whose new two-year deal to stay at the outfit was confirmed yesterday, bettered team-mate Michael Schumacher by just three hundreths of a second around the A1-Ring.

The quickest times were set in a 20 minute spell in the middle of the session when track temperatures were at their warmest. In the first session, only one Michelin-shod car made it into the top 10. But this time, the drivers using the French rubber were much more competitive.

Only two got anywhere near the dominant Ferraris, however. Juan Pablo Montoya's Williams and Kimi Raikkonen's McLaren were both only a tenth down on the red cars. Montoya pushed the Finn down to fourth with 34 minutes of the session gone, and the top four would remain in that order to the end.

Meanwhile, their respective team-mates Ralf Schumacher and David Coulthard found themselves off the pace. Schuey Jr was only 12th after a spin, with DC ninth.

Allan McNish gave himself an encouraging boost after a difficult few races by going fifth fastest for Toyota, despite an early spin. Meanwhile, his team-mate Mika Salo was way down in 19th.

The Arrows of Enrique Bernoldi and Pedro de la Rosa's Jaguar were also higher on the timesheets than usual in sixth and seventh. Both Cosworth-powered teams featured in the top 10 for most of the hour-long session, but Eddie Irvine and Heinz-Harald Frentzen had dropped to 11th and 13th respectively when the time was up.

Olivier Panis and Takuma Sato completed the top 10 in their Honda-powered BARs and Jordans, while Renault pairing Jenson Button and Jarno Trulli surprisingly struggled down in 14th and 17th.

There were plenty of spinners and drivers running very wide out of corners in this session. Giancarlo Fisichella was the only one to beach his car terminally when he went off at the first corner after 22 minutes. Seconds earlier, Nick Heidfeld suffered a technical problem and was forced to abandon his Sauber out on the track.

For full practice session 2 results, click here.