Timothy Collings' Friday Practice Report - Italian GP

Rubens Barrichello topped practice times ahead of Ferrari teammate Michael Schumacher in Friday's opening session for Sunday's Italian Grand Prix.

The Brazilian was quickest in the morning session with a lap of 1:25.057, a time that was unchallenged in the afternoon when Schumacher trimmed his best time to 1:25.117.

Italian Jarno Trulli in a Jordan was third-fastest, three-tenths of a second behind Barrichello, and ahead of the two McLarens driven by Finn Mika Hakkinen, defending champion and this year's leader, and Briton David Coulthard.

Hakkinen failed to appear in Friday's opening session, apparently satisfied with the set-up of his car. Coulthard pushed hard in the second session and went off after 11 minutes, spinning heavily and abandoning his car.

Another Briton Eddie Irvine was sixth for the Jaguar team on a warm and sunny day at the Autodromo Nazionale in Monza where the majority of the drivers had difficulties judging the revised configuration of the circuit.

Nearly all the field missed the chicanes, the first two of which have been heavily revised this year, and several misjudged their braking points at other turns on the high-speed track.

Schumacher, twice a winner of the Italian Grand Prix for Ferrari, trails Hakkinen by six points in the drivers' title race with four races remaining.

He knows that he needs to beat him in Sunday's showdown, the last race in Europe this season, to keep alive his title challenge.

"I am generally happy with the work we did today," said Schumacher. "I did a lot of laps and we made several fine tuning changes to the car.

"These resulted in some good improvements and today's performance confirms the work we did here last week. The car is going very well, better than in the past when we came here. This time the car is a pleasure to drive.

The day was dominated by the duel between the two major teams with only Trulli separating them at the end of the action but Ferrari team chief Jean Todt was quick to point out that this slim advantage meant little.

"We worked on fine-tuning our cars...Our running today confirmed the conclusions we reached last week in testing and I think that tomorrow, in qualifying, we will be in the running for the places on front two rows," he said.