Productive day for Williams

Both Juan Pablo Montoya and Marc Gene featured highly in the first practice session with third and fourth spots respectively. But the pair dropped down the order in the second session with Gene in seventh and Montoya 11th.

Despite the relative slow start, Montoya was confident with his car although the cooler temperatures were different to those experienced during testing at the Northamptonshire circuit.

"We made some good evaluation tests today," said the Colombian. "Track conditions were changing quite a lot throughout the sessions but nevertheless we went through our scheduled programme and I can say I am reasonably happy with the balance of my car. Weather has been better than yesterday, even if still quite cold, and I definitely hope for some more dry running tomorrow."

Team-mate Gene was less positive about his FW26 but is confident the problem will be solved before Saturday qualifying.

"All in all it was a positive day," he said. "We have been working on tyre evaluation like everyone today and we also made some set-up changes. The car did not always behave as expected though, so we need to sit down now and carefully go through the data we have collected, in order to have a better understanding of the situation. What tyre we I will use for qualifying and in the race is still undecided at the moment."