Pre-qual: Sato's shocker

The pace was fast in pre-qualifying, and M Schumacher benefited from running 11th thanks to his Monaco disaster, as running later than usual gave him more favourable track conditions. His 1m28.278s was a superb effort, but it was nothing compared with Sato's banzai effort which netted an amazing 1m27.691s, over half a second faster.

Ralf Schumacher was very untidy at the start of his flying lap, but the rest of it was sublime. He produced a 1m28.655s to give Williams, and BMW, a much-needed boost with the third fastest time.

Practice pacesetter Jenson Button produced a lap of 1m28.816s, but wasn't helped by running second in the session. He wound up fifth, behind McLaren's David Coulthard, whose joy subsided when he broke down on the way back to the pits, which briefly caused the session to be red flagged. So it looks like DC will be starting from the back of the grid.

Barrichello upped his game, the Brazilian producing his fastest lap of the weekend at 1m29.014s, which just pipped the Williams of Juan Pablo Montoya, who looked much happier than he did this morning.

Kimi Raikkonen was sixth fastest for McLaren, ahead of Rubens Barrichello (Ferrari) and Juan Pablo Montoya (Williams).