Ultimately, however, Saturday morning times are relatively meaningless as teams concentrate on evaluating tyres and race set-up for tomorrow's race. Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn, for example, said yesterday: “Michael (Schumacher) was very happy with the balance of his car but Rubens (Barrichello) less so, therefore Michael will be able to concentrate on tyres, with Rubens still looking at his set-up.”

That plan was modified, however, when Schumacher spun off at Turn 14 some 25 minutes into the session. He managed to extricate himself from the gravel and return to the pits but was not seen for the remainder of the session.

The Renaults continue to impress, with Jarno Trulli setting the second fastest time ahead of promising young Spanish team-mate Fernando Alonso. Juan Pablo Montoya was fourth quickest with the first WilliamsF1 BMW, ahead of Giancarlo Fisichella's Jordan-Honda and Olivier Panis in the first Toyota. The Frenchman is hoping for better things in today's qualifying session after taking a gamble on a stiffer set-up yesterday, which ultimately cost him grip and made the car nervous on Sepang's bumps.

Kimi Raikkonen's McLaren-Mercedes was next up, ahead of a much more promising showing from Antonio Pizzonia, who lapped within 0.3s of team mate Mark Webber's qualifying best of yesterday. The team is hoping not to have solved a fuel pick-up problem that caused them to have to run with heavy fuel loads on the opening day.

Ralf Schumacher was ninth quickest aboard the second Williams, ahead of Ralph Firman in the second Jordan.