Williams strong again at Indy

Juan Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher ended the opening day in third and sixth positions respectively on a track, like Montreal, where they have showed strong form in the past.

"I am reasonably satisfied with the performance of my car today, even if we have still quite a lot of work ahead of us before we can say we are ready for tomorrow's qualifying and Sunday's race," said a cagey Montoya. "It's too early to say where we really stand in relation to the competition. I evaluated the type of tyres that Michelin brought here and they seem to be both good, but before making our choice we need to have a careful look at the data."

Schumacher, who suffered a couple of brief offs, added: "All in all I can be very happy with today's performance even if driving was fairly difficult due to the fact the track is still quite slippery. I finished my tyre evaluation and collected some useful data. There is still some work to do, but I am pretty confident about the weekend ahead."

Technical director Sam Michael said: "We have had a productive day, spending the time looking at the race set-up. We did not have any reliability problems and we have good information to make our tyre choice. Tonight we will put a lot of effort in to the set-up work for tomorrow's qualifying and also for the race."