Ralf Schumacher was in fifteenth and Juan Pablo seventeenth. For a first day of practice this was the teams worst performance so far this year. Ralf made it very clear that the team was struggling to find the right setup for the car.

Ralf said: "This track doesn’t really suit us, as we were expecting. We still have big problems with the set-up of the car and we are mostly fighting with getting good balance. I tried the two different tyres, but we still haven’t found the right solution in that area . We’ve got a lot of work to do."

Even with the poor start to the weekend the team did celebrate a major milestone, this been the teams 400th Formula One race of which the team has won 108 Grand Prix, had 113 pole positions and 121 fastest race laps. They have also won nine constructors’ titles.

As for the other teams it would once again be Ferrari's Michael Schumacher who would set the fastest time finishing the day with a best lap of 1m:20.380.

But Michael was not joined by his Ferrari team-mate Barrichello but by Heinz-Harald Frentzen in the fuel-light Arrows Cosworth who would set the second quickest time with a lap of 1m:20.450. Renault’s Jenson Button also improved his time to finish third quickest in the R202, ahead of fourth placed Barrichello and BAR’s Olivier Panis. In a sign that the Arrows cars are performing well Frentzen’s team-mate Enrique Bernoldi was sixth quickest followed by McLaren’s Kimi Raikkonen, Felipe Massa, and Jordan’s Jarno Trulli.

Tenth would be Jaguar’s Eddie Irvine with a best time of 1m:21.294, while McLaren’s Scottish driver David Coulthard was twelfth. Sauber's Nick Heidfeld was thirteenth, ahead of Jordan’s Takuma Sato, who finally managed to get some time out on the track after his earlier problems. Splitting the BMW WilliamsF1 drivers came BAR’s Jacques Villeneuve in sixteenth.