Practice 2: Irvine closest to Schuey

Irvine's performance was timed to perfection, given Ford's announcement that it will continue to give its full backing to the Jaguar Formula 1 programme. But it almost went horribly wrong for the outfit when the Ulsterman spun at Turn 11 trying to avoid his team-mate Pedro de la Rosa, who had been slow out of the previous corner.

Irvine was around six tenths slower than the Ferrari, which appeared to be in a different class to the rest of the field once again. But the Jaguar was well ahead of the third fastest man, David Coulthard. The Scot jumped up fairly late in the session ahead of his McLaren team-mate Kimi Raikkonen.

Jacques Villeneuve gave British American Racing cause to be optimistic with the fifth best time, ahead of Felipe Massa's replacement Heinz-Harald Frentzen, who was enjoying his return to F1 with Sauber.

The Williams drivers did not have the best of days. Following his two spins in the first session, Ralf Schumacher went second fastest to his brother early on in the second. But he never improved thereafter and had dropped to 10th by the finish.

His team-mate Juan Pablo Montoya had a spin early on at Turn 1, then stopped with a problem towards the end of the session. The Colombian was only 16th out of the 19 runners.

Jenson Button was another to pull off with a problem in the final minutes. The Renault ace was only 13th, while his team-mate Jarno Trulli was eighth.

Rubens Barrichello did not take part in the second session following his crash in the first, leaving the Brazilian with some catching up to do on Saturday.