Differing fortunes for Williams at Kyalami.

With the weather at it's glorious best, the 2.64-mile AA Kyalami Grand Prix circuit was bathed in sunshine throughout Friday's test session in which BAR Honda were represented by Olivier Panis and Williams BMW were represented by Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya.

The Frenchman ended the day top of the timesheets with a best lap of 1 minute 21.622 seconds as he continued working on the new 003 model while Schumacher recorded the best time of the Williams team-mates with a best effort of 1 minute 22.062 seconds.

"I had a very productive morning, working on the set-up of the car," announced a tired but happy German driver. "We did a complete endurance run putting full mileage onto the engine. We changed engines in the afternoon and all in all had a very promising day."

Les happy with his day's running was Montoya who suffered a clutch problem in the morning and then a slight accident during the afternoon session and his best lap was over four tenths slower than Schumacher with a time of 1 minute 22.494 seconds.

"My day started with mechanical and clutch problems and further to that I have been struggling with the car set-up," announced the frustrated Colombian. "In the afternoon we put new tyres on the car and this affected the balance, which eventually caused me to go off the circuit and damage the front wing. Anyway we still have several days in front of us and we are getting there."

Overseeing the on-track action was Williams' technical director Patrick Head who has been pleased with the progress of the brand new Williams FW23, which only took to the track for the first time last week at Silverstone.

"Ralf had a very useful day," explained Head. "We had a few problems with Juan Pablo in the morning as he was not very happy with the handling and this culminated in a car damaging trip off the track. We hope to get the car fixed and back on the track for him tomorrow."

Despite the niggling problems that restricted Montoya today, the Williams team are more that satisfied with the progress being made thus far and especially the performances of the all-new BMW V10 engines that have been designed for this year's car.

"Yesterday we left the engine in Ralf's car in order to complete the regular testing mileage today," explained BMW's Motorsport Director Dr Mario Theissen. "After a trouble free morning session the mileage was completed so we changed the V10. With the new engine Ralf did some instillation laps in the afternoon and there were no problems on the engine side in Juan Pablo's car as well."

The team will continue to take advantage of the glorious weather over the weekend as they prepare for the first Grand Prix of the year in Melbourne on March 4th.