Rivals question gap to Ferrari

Jenson Button's BAR-Honda was fourth quickest, just 0.03s behind Jarno Trulli's Renault, and BAR team boss David Richards said: "Clearly, Ferrari's performance was very, very impressive but let's wait and see where everyone is when we're actually running for the grid tomorrow afternoon. But I don't want to try to undermine anything, the Ferrari obviously looks like a very quick car. Even if we drained all the fuel out I suspect that we might not be able to do those times."

Richards added: "Today is rather a strange day and you are never sure what anyone is running and what strategies people are working to. Even tomorrow afternoon I guess they will be speculating about what laps people are going to stop on, so in many ways I think it's not the clean way it used to be and it's quite confusing. And if it's confusing for us, it must be very confusing for the spectators.

Renault's Flavio Briatore was happy, however, with his cars third and fifth. "Friday is a testing day and I'm very happy about the performance of the car on a long run. One lap means nothing now and what you are basically doing on a Friday is preparing the car for tomorrow. Our car, on a long run, was very quick."

It wasn't, however, as quick as Rubens Barrichello's Ferrari on an extended six lap run, although how the tyres behave in race conditions may change the picture.

The Brazilian did 50 percent more laps than team-mate Michael Schumacher. The world champion has always been able to do a stunningly quick lap straight away, and showed every sign of making the most of his brief visits to the circuit, having three off-track excursions, which he attributed to a strong wind.

Food for thought, however, was that Michael's second flying lap, on a dusty circuit early morning, was 0.7s faster than Rubens Barrichello's 2002 empty tanks pole position record and 0.6s quicker than any non-Ferrari would go all day! The rest were left to hope that the Ferrari's fuel tank was none too full...