Warm up: Frentzen fastest!

Frentzen's performance was good news for the Bridgestone runners, who had struggled in comparison to the Michelin cars in qualifying. Rubens Barrichello (sixth), Olivier Panis (eighth) and Giancarlo Fisichella (ninth) made the top 10 evenly split between the two tyre manufacturers.

As the session kicked off under clear blue skies, the track was still damp after overnight rain. Some drivers tried intermediates and even wets, but it was obvious that there was enough of a dry line when Mika Salo set the early pace in his 'slick'-shod Toyota. With ambient temperatures creeping into the 20s (degrees Celsius), track conditions improved as the 30-minute session wore on and times tumbled in turn.

Salo's early best of 1m37.846s was soon beaten by Juan Pablo Montoya's Williams, who set the first lap under 1m30s. The Colombian made an early car switch, as did Michael Schumacher who quickly jumped from one chassis to another after a slow exploratory lap.

Ralf Schumacher briefly replaced his team-mate at the head of the times, but the Williams driver would eventually finish up in seventh, while Montoya slipped way back to 20th. In contrast, the McLarens exchanged fastest laps during a frantic mid part of the session. David Coulthard took third in the end, Kimi Raikkonen was bumped down to fifth after a last-minute improvement by Jarno Trulli to snatch fourth.

Despite the tricky conditions, it was a relatively incident-free session. Michael Schumacher ran over the chicane at one point and Pedro de la Rosa had a spin there towards the end of the session. He avoided contact with the barriers, but the Jaguar driver was in 18th overall, 3.1s off Frentzen's pace.

For full warm up results, click here.