Practice 2: McLaren duo lead the way

Aside from an early improvement by the championship leader, Coulthard and Raikkonen fought for the top spot among themselves. Coulthard was the first to put a McLaren at the top of the times, only to see his Finnish team-mate take two tenths off his time a few minutes later. Coulthard responded in style to regain his place at the top with a lap just a few hundredths inside Kimi's.

The Ferrari drivers showed good pace in places but neither Schumacher nor Barrichello was able to put together a complete lap to rival the McLarens'.

Yet again it was a good session for Michelin-shod cars, with only Ferrari the only Bridgestone team in the top 10. Jenson Button shot up to fourth with his first flying lap, but dropped back to ninth by the time the flag fell.

Button's improvement was in stark contrast to the fortune of team-mate Jarno Trulli. The Italian took too much kerb through the Nurburgring chicane on his first run of the session, which pitched his car into a spin. He held the slide but could not prevent the Renault gently nerfing the tyre wall at the edge of the run-off area and his session was over. As everyone else improved he dropped back to 19th.

Trulli was in good company, as it was a session littered with spins and trips across the gravel. Takuma Sato tore the bargeboards off his Jordan with a trip over the kitty litter on the outside at Estoril. And both Olivier Panis and Ralf Schumacher spun at Chateau d'eau. Giancarlo Fisichella added to the job list in the Jordan garage after running off the track at the same corner.

Juan Pablo Montoya had perhaps the most spectacular of all the incidents when his Williams swapped ends under braking for the first corner. The FW24 bounced over the gravel, losing bits of front wing and turn vanes. The Colombian returned to the pits and was back out on track within a matter of minutes, but failed to improve his time and ended up 10th.

After missing a lot of the first session following his tangle with Sato it was another troubled session for Toyota's Mika Salo. The Finn went well when he was running, setting the fifth quickest time at one stage, but he fell back to seventh overall partly as a result of a blow engine cutting his session short with 10 minutes remaining.

Jaguar continued to show much better form than usual and Eddie Irvine was happier with the handling of his car. The Ulsterman felt he could find an tenth that would have moved him ahead of Ralf Schumacher but spun at 180º as he pushed just a little too hard. He eventually had to settle for sixth, with his efforts backed up by Pedro de la Rosa in eighth.