Barrichello on the pace

Rubens Barrichello used local knowledge to good effect as he set the fastest time in practice for the Brazilian Grand Prix in his home town of Sao Paulo.

The Ferrari driver has an abysmal record on home ground with 10 consecutive retirements going into this weekend’s Interlagos race.

But he started as he means to go on by setting a best time of one minute 11.166 seconds, beating team-mate Michael Schumacher by 0.168secs.

The world champion finished the session second with McLaren’s Kimi Raikkonen completing the top three.

BAR driver Jenson Button enjoyed an encouraging day’s work, finishing fourth in today’s second practice, one place ahead of test driver Anthony Davidson.

David Coulthard looked set for a strong result but his early-session form evaporated and he ended practice down in 15th for McLaren.

Raikkonen’s session got off to a bad start with the Finn spinning just four minutes in.

Coulthard gave McLaren more positive news when he quickly installed himself as the fastest man on track, although he was still short of this morning’s pace.

Button gave Britain a one-two in the early stages by improving on his mediocre first session effort.

Mark Webber ruined that though when he went fastest a quarter of the way through, giving Jaguar something to cheer on their final Formula One race weekend.

Jarno Trulli was the first man to go quicker than Juan Pablo Montoya’s pace in first practice.

The Italian, in just the second race of his Toyota career, took half a second off Webber’s time to go fastest.

Felipe Massa put his Sauber second for a very brief instant before Coulthard improved to move within a 10th of a second of Trulli.

Raikkonen became the first driver to lap within 1min 12secs when he went fastest 25 minutes into the session, as Button moved up to second at the same time.

He was quickly knocked down to third by BAR team-mate Takuma Sato before Michael Schumacher finally hooked a quick lap together.

The world champion was uninspiring in the first session and started the second in similar vein before showing his true colours halfway through this afternoon’s practice.

Davidson put up a brave attempt at dethroning the German but fell narrowly short, jumping up to second.

Button did manage to usurp Schumacher’s Ferrari though soon after, taking top spot by just 0.012secs.

Toyota’s Ricardo Zonta spun for the second successive session while Christian Klien ran wide at turn one in his Jaguar.

Lap times were unusually close with the top 15 drivers separated by less than a second until Schumacher improved his effort to go nearly four 10ths clear.

His time at the top was short lived though as team-mate Barrichello went fastest with less than 10 minutes remaining to the delight of his home crowd.

In first practice Montoya set the fastest lap with his final effort of the one-hour session.

His time of 1:12.547 was 0.067secs faster than Toyota test driver Ryan Briscoe, who ended the session a surprise second.

Ralf Schumacher gave Williams two of the top three places with third fastest while BAR tester Davidson was on the pace in taking fifth place.