Grip an issue for Williams boys.

Friday free practice for the Australian Grand Prix proved to be difficult for Williams-BMW drivers Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya - not least because the appeared to have little in hand for the pace-setting Ferraris.

While many were surprised by the pace of the two F2004s, few were taking the times as a solid indicator of the weekend to come. Among them, Ralf Schumacher and Juan Montoya, who claimed sixth and seventh in a pair of FW26s plagued by a lack of traction on the seldom-used Albert Park circuit.

"It was probably not the result I was looking forward to achieving in this first practice," Montoya admitted, having survived one major spin to trail his team-mate by four-tenths of a second, "I was expecting poor grip in the first session, due to the dusty track, but then the situation didn't improve that much when the track became cleaner, and the balance of my car was not ideal.

"We've now got some work ahead of us to close the gap to the Ferrari drivers, who have been very quick today."

Chief operations engineer Sam Michael was more optimistic.

"We have had a reasonably good first day in terms of checking all the systems for the race," he said, "We had no mechanical problems at all and got through the tyre
programme as planned. For the long runs, the cars look consistent, so now we will work on the set-up to make sure it is good for qualifying."