Imola, historically, has not been a happy hunting ground for Toyota, the circuit demanding a car that is comfortable riding the kerbs and also highly efficient under braking.

After the first day’s practice, test driver Ricardo Zonta was third quickest overall. The Brazilian’s 1m21.174s best compared with a pace-setting 1m20.484s from Spaniard Pedro de la Rosa who, after making his West McLaren Mercedes race debut in Bahrain, stepped back to his regular Friday testing role at Imola to allow fellow tester Alexander Wurz to substitute for the still-injured Juan Pablo Montoya.

Splitting De la Rosa and Zonta was Jenson Button, who lapped the first of the Lucky Strike BAR Honda cars in 1m21.052s. Panasonic Toyota Racing’s race drivers, Trulli and Ralf Schumacher finished the day 13th and 15th, with laps in 1m23.345s and 1m23.466s respectively.

“In the first session we concentrated on assessing the degradation of the two Michelin tyres,” Zonta explained, “but for the second practice we made a couple of set-up changes which actually took us in the wrong direction and made the car less predictable on the kerbs.” Zonta, in fact, finished the morning just 0.11s from the ultimate pace but was slower in the afternoon session.

Jarno Trulli completed only an installation lap in the first session before putting in 20 laps in the afternoon. “We didn’t do a lot of running in the first session because the track was still pretty ‘green’ after the overnight rain and any results you get are of limited benefit,” he explained.

Ralf Schumacher added: “We still have a lot of work to do on the chassis, starting with a lack of grip, but I hope that we can improve things tomorrow. I’ve always liked this circuit and scored my first Grand Prix win here in 2001.”

The top six was completed by Kimi Raikkonen’s McLaren (1m21.704s), Fernando Alonso’s Renault (1m21.899s) and Michael Schumacher, who lapped in 1m22.025s with the first of the Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro entries.

Team Technical Director, Chassis, Mike Gascoyne said: “After such a strong start to the season the expectations naturally rise but motor racing is never an easy business. We have room for improvement here and we will be looking carefully at all our data. The tyre choice here is not as clear cut as we thought it would be and that is another factor that we will be looking at carefully before tomorrow.”