Michael Schumacher put in a stunning lap to top the
timesheets of the first session today with his team-mate Rubens Barrichello in
second but over 0.8 seconds behind. Kimi Raikkonen was 3rd ahead of team-mate
David Coulthard while Ralf Schumacher was 5th ahead of his team-mate Juan
Pablo Montoya.
Allan McNish was a surprise 7th especially given that his
team-mate Mika Salo was 16th. The same goes for Panis as he ended up in 8th
while Villeneuve was 18th.
As usual though for practice it is hard to read into the times as they could
be on different fuel loads.
6 out of the top 10 were Michelin runners but given the gap
Ferrari have over the rest, it appear that the Bridgestones are matching the
Michelins under these conditions. The second session will give us a better
idea of how competitive the Michelins are as the track warms up further and
the teams start to reduce their fuel loads.
There were no major incident during the session however both
the Minardis stopped on the track with Webber losing most of the session while
Davidson stopped towards the end of the session.
Olivier Panis covered the most number of laps with 13 while
Kimi Raikkonen only covered 5 laps, Mark Webber only did 6 laps and Michael
Schumacher only 7 laps.
