Practice Session 1: Ferrari back in the old routine

Rubens Barrichello showed he has no intention of playing second fiddle to Michael Schumacher for a second season and topped the timesheets. His 1m29.056s was three-tenths faster than Schumacher's final effort, which yielded 1m29.368s, and the Brazilian showed his desire to get on with the programme by chastising his mechanics when his Ferrari's engine refused to fire-up first time near the end of the session.

The Prancing Horse held a 0.7secs advantage over the McLaren-Mercedes charge, which was led by Mika Hakkinen. The Finn lapped the Albert Park venue in 1m30.037s, just 0.015secs faster than team mate David Coulthard. Neither McLaren showed any reliability problems during the hour-long session.

The rest languished 1.3secs off the top two teams, with Ralf Schumacher snatching fifth quickest for the Michelin-shod Williams-BMW team on 1m31.352s, despite an off-track excursion earlier in the session. New team mate Juan Pablo Montoya also visited the Melbourne run-off, after locking-up at Turn One, on his way to the eighth fastest time. The Colombian was the quickest of the four rookies who will make their Grand Prix debuts on Sunday.

Jos Verstappen was an impressive sixth fastest in his Asiatech-powered Arrows, just outpacing Heinz-Harald Frentzen's Jordan-Honda, who scored first blood for the Silverstone-based team in its battle for Honda's affections with British American Racing. Frentzen's team mate Jarno Trulli was 11th fastest.

Nick Heidfeld was ninth quickest in his Sauber-Petronas, ahead of Olivier Panis's BAR-Honda. The second BAR of Jacques Villeneuve spent most of the session in the garage with technical problems, so the French-Canadian languished in 21st. Also in the wars was Prost's Jean Alesi, who also sat out most of the period with transmission dramas.

F1's most inexperienced driver ever, Kimi Raikkonen, got off to a solid start in his first practice session. The young Finn was 12th fastest, but over a second slower than team mate Heidfeld. He outpaced both Jaguars of Luciano Burti and Eddie Irvine, who were 13th and 14th respectively.

Also in the wrong half of the grid were the two Renault-powered Benettons, with Jenson Button finishing the session in 15th and Giancarlo Fisichella 17th. Embarrassingly, the Italian was outpaced by F1 newboy Fernando Alonso, whose European Minardi is powered by a re-badged Ford engine that is three years old...

Gaston Mazzacane (Prost-Acer) was 18th, ahead of Enrique Bernoldi (Arrows-Asiatech) and Tarso Marques (European Minardi), while the hamstrung Villeneuve and Alesi completed the field.

For the full practice session 1 results click here.