Warm-up: Schuey shows who's boss

The reigning World Champion and runaway 2002 points leader was the busiest driver of the morning by completing 18 laps, and the last of which was the fastest by 0.714secs ahead of Barrichello. Schumacher's 1m14.174s is almost 2secs quicker than last year's fastest race lap of David Coulthard (McLaren).

The big talking point of the session, however, was the poor performance of the Williams-BMW duo. Although pole sitter Juan Pablo Montoya didn't venture out for the first 15mins, other than to check out the spare car early on, he was only 14th fastest during his eight-lap stint.

Team-mate Ralf Schumacher fared little better and was 12th, and both were over 2secs off the pace. Ralf also spun twice during the session, prompting questions about the team's rear-end grip in race set-up.

An entertaining battle for third fastest on the timesheet was won by Renault's Jarno Trulli, but the Italian was 1.2secs slower than Schumacher. Sauber duo Felipe Massa and Nick Heidfeld were fourth and fifth, ahead of the second Renault of Jenson Button.

McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen and David Coulthard were seventh and ninth respectively, sandwiching the improved Jaguar of Eddie Irvine. Takuma Sato was the only runner to hit major problems when his launch control failed at the end of the pit lane, forcing him to use the spare Jordan.