Friday March 15th, 2002

World Champion Michael Schumacher remained calm after first practice for the Malaysian Grand Prix despite being more than one second behind McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen, who set the quickest time of the session.

Ferrari driver Schumacher, winner of the season opening Australian Grand Prix two weeks ago, had topped the timesheets in the first of the two sessions today, but saw his McLaren rivals fighting back to take the first two spots, relegating him to third place.

However, Schumacher, who has won at the Sepang circuit in the last two years, played down the importance of today's times and remained confident for qualifying.

"We worked on defining our tyre choice," said Schumacher. "The tyres are good and I am happy with their performance. This meant we did not spend much time working on the actual set-up of the car.

"But I am pretty optimistic for the rest of the weekend. I am not worried about the gap to the quickest runners today. We expected the others to be fast here, but we have to remember that Friday's times do not always give a clear indication of the real situation."

Teammate Rubens Barrichello was down in seventh position after suffering an engine problem in his car.

Published at 08:22:55 GMT