Adrian explained, "The main issue was with the brakes and then the tyres overheating. I was struggling under braking, and this morning I lost a lot of the session."

Whilst he had no problems to speak of, Fisico did not fare much better. Although he was 6 tenths faster than his team mate, it was still only good enough for 19th - albeit less than two tenths off Jenson Button's Honda.

In the second session Adrian remained 20th, just over 2 seconds off pace-setter Fernando Alonso's fastest time. He explained, "In the afternoon the track was slower as the temperature increased and it was difficult to get the tyres to work well again, but now we have found the problem and can get it fixed for tomorrow."

Giancarlo managed to get out of the last two places, posting the 18th fastest time, leaving Rubens Barrichello as the filling in a Force Inda sandwich. The Roman completed 42 laps in the session and was almost two tenths faster than the Honda of Barrichello and exactly 1.5 seconds slower than Button.

Fisi said, "We went through the scheduled programme today and made some steps forward, but we are still relatively far away from the others and have some work to do.

The grip level was quite poor in both sessions and we had some understeer in the high speed corners. We also compared the tyres and the softer compound works OK, but it will still be a difficult weekend."

Saturday morning saw a surprise top-two in the way of Nelson Piquet Jr and Mark Webber and a not-so-surprising bottom-two in the way of the Force boys. Adrian remained last for the third session - this time managing to be within two seconds of the pace-setter. Fisi was more than 2.5 tenths faster than his team-mate but was still more than 6 tenths slower than the 18th placed man Nick Heidfeld.

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