If am honest, I found the first day of practice for the Spanish Grand Prix even more tedious than I thought it was going to be. There seemed few time improvements - although there were several surprises which made one hope that the race itself might be slightly more exciting.

Here, on this circuit where everyone apart from Ferrari tests ad nauseum, the red cars actually completed 87 laps in first practice, more than anyone else, leaving them first and fourth. Only Olivier Panis (46) did more laps than Michael Schumacher (45), so Ferrari appeared to be taking their position seriously.

But way down in 12th place came David Coulthard on the eighth anniversary of his Grand Prix debut, lapping in the 1m 21s where test driver Alexander Wurz holds the unofficial lap record in 1m 17s. Worse off in 15th (Ralf Schumacher) and 17th (Juan Pablo Montoya) positions were Williams. This is their test circuit, for heavens' sake. What are they doing down there?

Meanwhile the first 14 cars were covered by less than a second, Heinz-Harald Frentzen second to Michael with Jenson Button the first Michelin-user in third place, ahead of Barrichello and then Olivier Panis and Enrique Bernoldi. Are BAR back on form? Has Arrows' first test session really brought them up to the front?

I fear the answer is no and that it will be business as usual in qualifying tomorrow but we can but hope that the hierarchy might be upset. But even though everyone tests here, the conditions in January and February are considerably different to what they are in late April and as usual, quite a few people have had some unpleasant surprises concerning their level of competitivity.

As you can read elsewhere, David Coulthard was in Friday's press conference and didn't enjoy it too much. He was unhappy with most of the questions because he was pretty unhappy with what he knew were the answers. Questions such as 'how are things with Kimi Raikkonen?' or 'compare your two Finnish teammates?' weren't answered. Nor were inquiries into when things were going to get better with the car/engine. It wasn't a happy moment. He couldn't even take respite in a question about a Turkish Grand Prix. It seems he ordered a boat to be built there some ago, and in spite of handing over money, not much has come back his way.

All in all, then, we await qualifying with interest. As I mentioned, the times were relatively slow on Friday, so we should certainly expect a change on Saturday but how much? The strange thing is that teams such as Williams and McLaren are in so much trouble, and Ferrari, who don't even test much there, are relatively at ease. We shall see if that continues! Bob Constanduros