WilliamsF1 struggles in 1st Friday practice

Juan Pablo would report that he was having understeer problems with his car. During the session we would see the team change his rear wing to a different one in order to reduce the understeer. Ralf would complete eighteen laps, with Massa completing as many. It would appear that the pair still have a lot of work to do to get their cars setup for this circuit.

But at the end of the session it would be the Ferrari pair of Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello who would set the fastest times at the Circuit De Catalunya. Schumacher set a best lap time of 1m:20.681 after completing eleven laps.

Barrichello’s time was six hundredths slower and the Brazilian completed 10 laps as part of his settling in and tyre testing. In third came Sauber’s Felipe Massa, who finished with a 1:21.364, six tenths slower than Schumacher.

Fourth and fifth would be occupied by Michelin runners with McLaren’s Kimi Raikkonen fourth followed by Renault's Jarno Trulli. Sixth was Heinz-Harald Frentzen in the Arrows Cosworth. David Coulthard was seventh fastest but his time was 1.1 seconds slower than Michael.

Nick Heidfeld was eighth in the other Sauber Petronas, followed by Jordan’s Giancarlo Fisichella and Arrows’ driver Enrique Bernoldi. For Fisichella's Jordan team-mate Takuma Sato he would fail to complete any laps having suffered a technical problem which brought him to a halt just metres from the pit lane exit.

After his run of strong performances Jenson Button could only finish the session in eleventh, ahead of the BMW-Williams of Ralf Schumacher. Team-mate Juan-Pablo Montoya was back in fifteenth.

BAR’s Olivier Panis was thirteenth, Toyota’s Mika Salo fourteenth, while Jaguar’s Pedro de la Rosa took the 16th best time in the problematic R3 contender. He was followed by Jacques Villeneuve, Eddie Irvine, Alan McNish, and Mark Webber.