Saturday October 12th, 2002

By Timothy Collings

Luckless Japanese Takuma Sato's hopes of impressing his army of home fans went up in smoke on Saturday morning as Ferrari resumed normal service in advance of Sunday's Japanese Grand Prix.

The diminuitive Sato, whose presence at Suzuka with the Jordan-Honda team helped draw a crowd of 55,000 on Friday, had clocked the 12th best time before his engine appeared to expire in a cloud of smoke.

His yellow car was promptly surrounded by fire marshals with extinguishers as flames poured out of the rear of the vehicle and he escaped unscathed.

The incident, in the closing seconds of a routine Saturday morning practice session, was the most spectacular distraction as Michael Schumacher, sixth on Friday, regained his usual ascendancy with the fastest lap of the 45-minutes run and the quickest lap of the weekend to date.

His time of 1:32.978 lifted him six-tenths of a second clear of his nearest rival, his own teammate Rubens Barrichello, as the two scarlet men regained control of the pace and the contest.

Schumacher's younger brother Ralf was third quickest in his Williams BMW ahead of David Coulthard and his McLaren-Mercedes-Benz teammate Kimi Raikkonen. Juan Pablo Montoya, who has said he plans to marry his long-time girlfriend Connie when the season is over, was sixth.

Jarno Trulli was seventh for Renault and Eddie Irvine eighth for Jaguar as the sun rose on a warm and dry Saturday in southern Japan with long queues around the famous old Honda-owned fairground circuit suggesting another attendance to buck the modern trend of falling interest.

Pos  Driver        Team                   Time                    Laps
 1.  M.Schumacher  Ferrari           (B)  1:32.978  225.382 km/h   7  
 2.  Barrichello   Ferrari           (B)  1:33.688    +    0.710   7  
 3.  R.Schumacher  Williams BMW      (M)  1:34.142    +    1.164   8  
 4.  Coulthard     McLaren Mercedes  (M)  1:34.540    +    1.562   9  
 5.  Raikkonen     McLaren Mercedes  (M)  1:34.552    +    1.574   8  
 6.  Montoya       Williams BMW      (M)  1:34.751    +    1.773   8  
 7.  Trulli        Renault           (M)  1:35.330    +    2.352   8  
 8.  Irvine        Jaguar Cosworth   (M)  1:35.533    +    2.555   7  
 9.  Fisichella    Jordan Honda      (B)  1:35.541    +    2.563   8  
10.  Massa         Sauber Petronas   (B)  1:35.587    +    2.609   9  
11.  Heidfeld      Sauber Petronas   (B)  1:35.999    +    3.021   8  
12.  Sato          Jordan Honda      (B)  1:36.199    +    3.221  12  
13.  Button        Renault           (M)  1:36.224    +    3.246   7  
14.  Salo          Toyota            (M)  1:36.265    +    3.287   7  
15.  de la Rosa    Jaguar Cosworth   (M)  1:36.342    +    3.364   7  
16.  Panis         BAR Honda         (B)  1:36.792    +    3.814  11  
17.  Villeneuve    BAR Honda         (B)  1:36.830    +    3.852  12  
18.  McNish        Toyota            (M)  1:37.306    +    4.328   4  
19.  Webber        Minardi Asiatech  (M)  1:37.673    +    4.695  10  
20.  Yoong         Minardi Asiatech  (M)  1:39.254    +    6.276  11  

All Timing Unofficial

Published at 01:03:18 GMT