Williams Hopeful of Strong Weekend

Australian Mark Webber was fifth quickest in the afternoon session, finishing as the third fastest racing driver behind the McLarens of Kimi Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya.

Despite some issues with the balance of his car, Webber was pleased with his day.

"We had a pretty good day and we went through all of our programme," said Webber. "My car ran reliably and the mechanics and engineers did a good job in getting everything ready.

"We still have to work on our long distance pace because the balance still wasn't ideal this afternoon so we'll work on that in the practice sessions tomorrow. In the second session today we had the best track temperature to do the balance work for the race.

"We have a bit of work to do tonight but we are not looking too bad at all."

Teammate Nick Heidfeld completed a positive day for Williams by setting the sixth fastest time.

"We can be quite happy with our positions today if we compare them to what we have achieved on Fridays in the last few races," said Heidfeld. "Of course, it's only Friday but we hope Saturday and Sunday will be as good.

"In terms of our programme, we completed our usual work on the tyres and did some small changes on the set-up but obviously, like every other team, we got through the majority of our set-up work last week during the test here in Monza."