At one stage it looked like the WilliamsF1 drivers would come away with the fastest times in practice but they were only beaten in the closing minutes by Michael. The worrying thing was the performance of the Bridgestone tyres in conditions of high temperatures, something that Michelin has historically performed better in.

Juan Pablo at least could look at the times and see that the gap to Michael was just 0.037 seconds. Ralf was just 0.410 seconds behind in third. The only moment for the WilliamsF1 team was when Juan Pablo was seen coasting back to the pits possibly with a problem.

Again showing the excellent performance of the Michelin tyres Renault's Jarno Trulli was in fourth place with Rubens Barrichello fifth. BAR's Jenson Button was sixth.

The McLaren's of Kimi Raikkonen and David Coulthard would finish in seventh and eighth fastest respectively. Fernando Alonso would drop down to ninth in the second Renault and Australian Mark Webber finished tenth for Jaguar.

As for the teams prospects for the rest of the weekend, well at least Juan Pablo was more satisfied with the balance of his car and if the wide variation in times between the two Ferrari's does indicate that Michael is on a softer tyre then he may be able to perform well in qualifying but in the race the prospects for the WilliamsF1 team should be far better than they were in Melbourne.