Teams comment on practice

"We did little running today because we tested here with all the other teams last week," said Ferrari's team manager Jean Todt.

"That meant we were able to acquire a good amount of information as to the best set-up to adopt on our cars."

The Jordan drivers concurred with Todt, explaining the recent multi-team test meant that the two one-hour sessions were less than essential.

"There was no need to complete many laps today as we had a three-day test here last week when we worked on set-up," said Jarno Trulli, who ran only in the afternoon session and yet managed fourth fastest time.

"It was not necessary to do much running," confirmed Heinz-Harald Frentzen, who ran for just five minutes at the end of the final session. "A big part of this job was done last week," agreed BMW boss Gerhard Berger - Williams BMW drivers Ralf Schumacher and Jenson Button ended up second and sixth.

However, several of the teams appear to have been caught out over tyre performance, claiming the circuit conditions are completely different from last week's test.

"All the good work we did at the test last week was not really of use today because the track has changed so much," claimed BAR's Jacques Villeneuve.

"We had to be careful with the tyres as they went off really quickly," explained Benetton's Giancarlo Fisichella. This in itself suggests another reason why the teams did not use all the time allotted them in practice - because tyre degradation on the Spanish track is so high the teams feel the need to keep as many new tyres for the race as possible.

Sunday's race could well come down to who uses their tyres most effectively.