Friday March 1st, 2002

Williams driver Ralf Schumacher was hoping to be able to get closer to the Ferrari team as the weekend progressed after finishing more than 1.5 seconds behind his brother Michael in the first practice session for the Australian Grand Prix.

Ralf finished today's session in third place, albeit the pace of the BMW-powered Williams FW24 was no match for Ferrari's old F2001. The German, who was the quickest of the Michelin runners, complained about the weather conditions at the start of first practice, and was hoping to catch up on Saturday.

"We were a bit unlucky with the weather today," said Schumacher. "At the start of the first session the track was wet and we had some rain later as well. A positive thing was that I could test both the wet and the intermediate tyres.

"Additionally I also tried the two types of dry tyre options and we have decided which we're going to use for tomorrow. Ferrari appears far away but I hope that we will be able to catch up during the weekend."

Juan Pablo Montoya finished right behind his teammate in fourth place, the Colombian suffering both understeer and overseer during both sessions.

"The track was very slippery at the start, so it was quite difficult to adjust the car to it," he said. "I suffered with oversteer in the first session and understeer in the second and the intermittent rain did not help as the conditions of the track were quickly changing and weren't even consistent over the lap. We'll see tomorrow."

Published at 05:10:30 GMT