By role
March 5 2004

Italian driver Jarno Trulli finished 3rd on the free practice of the Australian Grand Prix. His teammate, Fernando Alonso finished 5th just slightly slower. The session was dominated by the Ferraris of Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello. Michael Schumacher run only 15 laps to set a best time of 1.24.718. His teammate, Rubens Barrichello, run 22 laps and finished just 0.1 seconds behind the German.

Trulli fought hard to keep the pace but his best effort was more than 1 second slower than the German after completing 23 laps. He finished 3rd and best of the rest in the session:

"In general, it was a good trouble-free day for us. We completed our programme on the set-up and the tyres, and I am pleased with the results. So far, the car has been reliable and I think we have a solid base for further improvements. I am confident we can keep making progress as the track improves, and am looking forward to the new format qualifying session tomorrow." Said Trulli.

Jenson Button with his BAR Honda was able to finish 4th marginally slower than Trulli after 15 laps. Alonso finished fifth with a time of 1.25.853 less than 0.1 seconds behind Trulli.

"From my point of view, it was a pretty good day. We still need to improve in terms of the car's balance, and particularly work hard with the data to make the correct tyre choice. We did lots of laps, which allowed us to improve the set-up quite significantly, and I think we ran a good programme." Said the Spaniard.

The Williams were just behind the Spaniard with Ralf Schumacher holdingthe age over Juan Pablo Montoya. The dissapointment of the day was Raikkonen who finished 10th behind his teammate who ended up 8th.

The Renault team was a bit frustrated on the first day of testing:

"As expected, the restrictions imposed by the new regulations make Friday a slightly frustrating day, as we are unable to obtain all the answers we are looking for in the necessarily limited running time. However, a well-disciplined programme saw us make good progress during the two hours, with everything running according to plan. Our level of competitiveness is satisfactory and the fight at the front is predictably close, except of course for the dominant start Ferrari have made. However, I am sure we can look to close that gap." Said Pat Symonds.

The engine was going fine as Denis Chevrier explains:

"A positive first day from the engine side. The best news is that there is nothing to report: there were no incidents, and the cars completed medium-distance runs throughout the day, evaluating tyres, set-ups and track conditions. Our objective was to lay down a solid basis for the rest of the weekend, and I think we have done so, even if it is hard to draw any meaningful conclusions in terms of performance at this stage."