Practice 3: Monty on a mission

The Williams ace set his quick time with just two minutes of the session remaining, in the process displacing Michael Schumacher from the top of the timesheets. But the second Ferrari of Barrichello also put on a late charge, and fell just 0.172s short of claiming top honours, although the Brazilian did outpace his world champion team-mate for the second session running.

Michael Schumacher was third fastest despite an off at the final corner in his Ferrari, ahead of his brother Ralf, who was 0.296s slower than his tea-mate Montoya. The Williams and Ferrari drivers appeared to hold an advantage over the rest of the field, with a gap of just over half a second between Ralf and the next runner, Olivier Panis, who put in another impressive performance for Toyota.

David Coulthard was again just off the pace of the leaders in sixth, ahead of Renault's Jarno Trulli. Kimi Raikkonnen found himself back down the order after his fastest time in the first session. The Finn could spent much of the session outside top ten fastest times, and even a late charge could only elevate him to eighth, nearly a second off Montoya's pace.

Fernando Alonso was ninth in the second Renault, ahead of Cristiano da Matta (Toyota) and Mark Webber (Jaguar). Jacques Villenueve was 12th fastest, but it was an impressive performance since he only completed one flying lap in the session. It took the BAR team most of the session to get the Canadian running after his engine failure at the end of this morning's first practice, only for more clouds of engine smoke to send him straight back to the pits. The team soon waved him out, and he managed to sneak one lap in, although his BAR continued to spew smoke.