The rain has finally stopped
at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, although wet tyres
remained the order of the day in the last practice session before
final qualifying. Ferrari pair Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello
had a great intra-team battle for the fastest time as the track
slowly dried out, with Schumacher coming out on top by three-tenths
of a second.
Despite an early spin at the first corner,
Schumacher was in great form during the rest of the session. The
ever drying track surface always meant that the quickest times would
be set right at the end, and it was Michael who produced the right
lap at the right time. His 1m23.385s was 0.292s faster than Barrichello's
final effort.
Brazilian GP winner Giancarlo Fisichella
was the best of the rest for Jordan. The Italian always seems to
revel in the high-speed Montreal track, but he was still 1.855s
off the pace of Schumacher.
Renault's Fernando Alonso was once again
the best placed Michelin runner, the Spaniard just ahead of Ralf
Schumacher's Williams-BMW. The BAR-Hondas of Jacques Villeneuve
and Jenson Button sandwiched the McLaren-Mercedes of David Coulthard,
while Jarno Trulli (Renault) and Mark Webber (Jaguar) rounded out
the top 10.
The session had to be restarted early on
after Cristiano da Matta lost control of his Toyota and slammed
into the wall on the exit of Turn 7, which damaged the right front
corner of his car. Despite this, da Matta still managed to outpace
team-mate Olivier Panis, who had a close encounter with a wall at
the end of the first session today.
Heinz-Harald Frentzen was in the wars again,
as he followed up his first session crash with an engine failure
on his Sauber-Petronas. Team-mate Nick Heidfeld was 11th fastest,
ahead of Ralph Firman (Jordan), world championship leader Kimi Raikkonen
(McLaren) and the once again impressive Justin Wilson (Minardi).
Monaco
winner Juan Pablo Montoya was just 16th fastest. |