Like the rest of the drivers, Minardi's Mark Webber and Alex Yoong spent the first day of practice for Sunday's British Grand Prix splashing through puddles and searching for signs of a dry line at Silverstone.

The Minardi pair finished 17th and 18th respectively as heavy showers periodically soaked the track, providing ideal conditions to sample the two types of rain tyre available from Michelin this weekend and to work on wet-weather chassis set-ups.

According to a team press release, both drivers made progress in these areas, but like most competitors in the Formula One™ racing pit lane, they are hoping for better conditions on Saturday so they can seriously attack the Northamptonshire circuit.

"We had a positive day, but the changeable weather conditions meant we didn't make quite as much progress as we would have liked," said Webber afterwards. "This morning, the track was at its best about 15 minutes from the end of the session, but then it deteriorated when the rains came again with about 10 minutes to go.

"The circuit was a lot quicker in the second session and improving all the time, but then we had a couple of issues that prevented us from getting the best out of the car when the surface was at its driest.

"We worked through our wet tyre comparison and tried a couple of things in the second session that we thought we might use tomorrow, but they didn't really work out, so we'll revert to our plan from the first session. We're looking forward to Saturday, when hopefully, the weather will be an improvement on today."

Like Webber, team mate Yoong was making his first competitive F1™ racing appearance at Silverstone on Friday. "I haven't driven in the wet at Silverstone for a long time, and it was a lot more slippery out there today than I remember," said the Malaysian.

"We improved the car as the day went on and we now have a good idea on the direction we want to take if the practice and qualifying sessions tomorrow are wet. Today's sessions were relatively uneventful for me until the last 10 minutes, when I experienced a gearbox problem and spun as a result."

Team boss Paul Stoddart, meanwhile, summed up Minardi's progress, saying: "On a day when the Silverstone weather unfortunately lived up to its notoriously changeable reputation, we made useful progress developing its chassis settings for what may be a wet qualifying session, and perhaps even a wet race on Sunday.

"Both Mark and Alex did a good job in the tricky conditions and carried out some useful back-to-back comparisons with the 'heavy' and 'shallow' Michelin wet tyres. We can only hope the rain stops tomorrow to give everyone a chance to fine tune the dry weather handling of their cars."