Practice 2 Report - Pedro stays ahead

Pedro de la Rosa continued to set the pace at Magny Cours on Friday afternoon with a best lap of 1m14.460s. This was nearly seven-tenths quicker than his McLaren team mate Juan Pablo Montoya. A tenth slower was Michael Schumacher but he had to work hard to get the time while the McLarens and the Renaults seemed to have plenty in hand. Fernando Alonso was fourth quickest ahead of his team mate Giancarlo Fisichella, who had a spin but did not hit anything. Sixth quickest was Olivier Panis in hiss one-off testing appearance for Toyota, ahead of Rubens Barrichello, Jarno Trulli, Ralf Schumacher and David Coulthard.

Jacques Villeneuve was doing rather better than normal with the 11th quickest time ahead of Jenson Button, Felipe Massa, Takuma Sato, Tonio Liuzzi, Mark Webber and Nick Heidfeld.

There was bad news for Christian Klien, who went off and hit a barrier and for Kimi Raikkonen who suffered what looked to be an engine failure. That will probably mean that Kimi will drop 10 places on the grid on Sunday.