Schumacher 'surprised' at gap

Despite Ferrari deciding to take the conservative route of using last year's car for the Australian Grand Prix, the German was still 1.6secs quicker than Ralf Schumacher's Williams in third. Ferrari team-mate Rubens Barrichello split the brothers, 0.5sec down on the world champion.

Schumacher said: "We are quite pleased with today's performance and we feel more confident than before arriving here. But I am not over-confident because a lot can change between today and Saturday. Actually, I'm a little surprised about the gap to the other teams, but as usual on Friday you can never be sure about what fuel loads teams are running."

Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn added: "We know the F2001 very well and it is close to being well-balanced. Of course, the other teams are running new cars which might have more potential than ours, but I think we will be competitive tomorrow after a good first day of running."

While Ralf Schumacher admitted "Ferrari appears far away", he and the Williams team were still happy with their own practice. The wet/dry conditions allowed them to gain experience of different Michelin tyres. They tried two dry tyre options, the wets and the intermediates.

For full practice session 1 results, click here.

For full practice session 2 results, click here.