The young Japanese driver appeared to be running right on the ragged edge on several occasions, only for his sublime car control, in both wet and dry conditions, to bring his EJ12 back into line.

Sadly for fans, a mechanical problem put an early end to Sato's antics as he continued to experiment with various set-ups, but, after completing 40 laps, the most of any driver, the diminutive Japanese is already looking forward to Saturday's qualifying session.

"I must say I am pretty happy with today!" he beamed at the end of the second hour of practice, "It was very exciting to have my first outing at a grand prix weekend and a first run on this circuit in Melbourne.
"Overall, I am very pleased with how it went. The rainy spells meant we were able to try a variety of set-ups, which was very useful for me. I lost about ten minutes of running time towards the end of the second session due to a problem with my steering column, but otherwise things ran smoothly.
"There is still plenty of room to improve everywhere, but I didn't have any real problems with the car or with the circuit, so it is now just a question of working on the data with my engineers so that we can make improvements on my time for tomorrow."

Teammate Giancarlo Fisichella finished ninth on the timesheets and 36 completed laps. The Italian’s running was cut short by a glitch but he was generally content.

"Not a bad start to the weekend at all," he commented. "The first session, when I finished third in the timings, went very well. In the second session I tried some different set ups, concentrating mainly on race configuration.
"Sadly I stopped before the end because of a technical problem which was frustrating as I wanted to get more work done. If we qualify in the top eight tomorrow I think we will have done a good job."

Director of race and test engineering, Gary Anderson, was full of praise for both Sato and new team-mate Giancarlo Fisichella.
"I think we can be relatively contented with how things went today," he said, "We managed to complete a fair amount of work with both drivers, though we need to look into what caused Giancarlo to come to a stop seven minutes before the end of the session.
"Takuma did a very solid job on his first day of running. He seems very focused and not phased by things."

Honda were happy and said there will be more speed to come from the RA002E engine tomorrow. ”Overall it has been an encouraging day and all four Honda-powered drivers managed to complete a good number of laps.” Shuhei Nakamoto, the Race and Test Team Manager, Honda Racing Development explained “Giancarlo experienced some kind of problem with the engine towards the end of the session but we don't know what it was and he shut it down before anything too nasty happened.”
The speed trap times for both teams are not very good because we're not yet in a position to run the engine to its maximum potential. However, it's great to see the cars back in action on the track and everybody working well together in Honda's partner teams."