This might have had something to do with a light rain shower that covered the circuit 20 minutes before the start of the second session. The circuit was dry by the time the drivers hit the track but the grip laid down in the first session had been badly eroded.

But BAR-Honda is hotly tipped to fight Ferrari for a race victory this weekend and the signs are there that it has the speed. The Brackley-based team has been the pace-setter at Barcelona everytime it has visited the venue in testing. Schumacher was so concerned over BAR's current pace that he wanted to schedule extra testing at Mugello last week. After the team's performance today perhaps he should have insisted on it.

Toyota's test driver Ricardo Zonta continued his excellent form with third fastest time ahead of Ralf Schumacher, who seems to have come to grips with the WilliamsF1 FW26 quicker than team-mate Juan Pablo Montoya who was 12th! Neither of the Michelin-shod WilliamsF1s looks a match for BAR at the moment.

Spain's Fernando Alonso was fifth fastest in the Renault 0.6s slower than Button's afternoon benchmark of 1m15.935s. Rubens Barrichello was sixth, the fastest of the Ferrari drivers both of whom went slower in the second session than they had in the first. Schumacher was seventh fastest, over a second off his morning pace.Jarno Trulli was eighth ahead of Kimi Raikkonen's McLaren. The Finn has been the fastest of the two McLaren drivers all day, but his unbelievable run of poor luck continued when his MP4-19 stopped on the circuit with a problem that didn't appear to be driver related.

Cristiano da Matta broke into the top ten in tenth, just ahead of Toyota team-mate Olivier Panis, both of whom found themselves above Montoya. The Colombian is having a quiet weekend so far.

David Coulthard was 13th quickest, although at least his McLaren made it to the end of the session, while Mark Webber (14th) was the only Jaguar driver not to visit the gravel. Timo Glock was the fastest of the Jordan trio in 15th ahead of Bjorn Wirdheim, Felipe Massa (fastest of all early on in the session) and Takuma Sato (over two seconds slower than his team-mate).