It’s now the fourth race of the season, and the new race weekend format is beginning to settle into a pattern. With only two sets of tyres available to the team on Friday, it is difficult to make reliable comparisons while the track is still dirty. In these conditions, and with one eye on limiting engine mileage for the race drivers, it is often the third drivers who do most laps between 11:00 and 12:00. With 17 and 21 laps respectively, the two best times of the morning came from Pedro De La Rosa (McLaren) and Ricardo Zonta (Toyota) – as is becoming normal. The former, who drove in the previous race, is now back in his role as third driver.

The highest placed race driver was Jenson Button in his BAR. The Briton set pole position at Imola last year, and confirmed his competitiveness on the Italian track. His car, which has struggled for pace since the start of the year, is sporting new developments – and it’s encouraging for the team that Button needed only 6 laps to set his time.

Michael Schumacher, whose team has tested with four drivers at three tracks in the previous fortnight, showed that he will be a force to be reckoned with this weekend. The World Champion completed 14 laps, and finished 4th. Team-mate Rubens Barrichello was 11th.

Behind Schumacher came former Red Bull race driver Christian Klien – now third driver. He headed Takuma Sato in 6th, apparently confirming the BAR team’s competitiveness.

At McLaren, the team Renault are fearing this weekend, there was little out of the ordinary. Kimi Raikkonen completed just 5 laps to go 7th fastest, while Alexander Wurz, replacement for the still-injured Montoya, was 9th.

At Renault, the morning session was a typical 2005-style Friday morning: two installation laps for each driver, who wait for the second session to begin their tyre evaluations. Jarno Trulli (Toyota) also used this strategy in Bahrain, and completed just one installation lap this morning.

UPDATE: Here are the results from todays second practice session:

Pedro de la Rosa completed a Friday-double when he recorded the fastest time during the second practice run for the San Marino Grand Prix. The McLaren reserve ended the day a full half-second up on his nearest rival, Jenson Button, with a time of 1:20.484.

The result was less than a tenth short of Michael Schumacher’s Imola lap record set during last year’s race.

Button, the 2004 pole position holder, continued BAR’s return to form with a completive time of 1:21.052.

Kimi Raikkonen (1:21.704) was third fastest in the first of the race McLarens, but finished the session some five tenths down on Button’s 007.

Fourth was Toyota’s Ricardo Zonta (1:21.889) and fifth, Formula One’s man of the moment, Renault’s Fernando Alonso (1:21.889).

Schumacher made it five different teams in the top six with a time of 1:22.025 for P6 in his Ferrari.

Cross posted @ Full Throttle