After the fiery high of third place in Monaco turned to ashes in Montreal and at the Nurburgring, Eddie Irvine yesterday began the climb back into contention for honours at this weekend's French Grand Prix.

A week ago, in Germany, Irvine bemoaned Jaguar's sloppy preparations for the crucial qualifying hour as he slumped to 15th on the grid. Yesterday though, Irvine revived some of that Monaco form as he took the second fastest time in free practice behind McLaren's David Coulthard, despite an early morning electronic failure which sidelined him for the first practice hour.

These sessions are notoriously unreliable as a form guide as teams cycle through a variety of set-ups and seek to impress performance-hungry sponsors, and Irvine was cagey about his chances for the weekend, saying conditions had changed considerably from the test undertaken here earlier this month.

"Conditions are very different from those we experienced at the test session and the car doesn't feel as good as it did then," he said. "The circuit was very slippery in the morning and quite windy. I'm sure the team will fine-tune the car in an effort to extract more downforce for qualifying, but I'm reasonably satisfied with how we've started the weekend."

Irvine was eclipsed on the day by David Coulthard, as the Scot sought to reinvigorate his flagging championship challenge after a string of troubled races.

Coulthard's performance yesterday could be as deceptive as Irvine's, however. McLaren have struggled in qualifying in recent weeks, results which have prevented the Scot, or team-mate Mika Hakkinen, challenging Ferrari or an increasingly powerful looking Williams team.

Last weekend Coulthard blamed his team's poor recent showings on a flaw in the car which leads to excessive wearing of the rear tyre in qualifying, a problem which prevents the drivers from pushing as hard as necessary.

Unfortunately for Coulthard, with no inter-race test to benefit from, the problems could persist. Magny Cours' tight corners and chicanes can exacerbate rear tyre wear as the power is applied heavily on the exits, and handling can be badly compromised.

The deceptive success of the top two was mirrored in negative by Michael Schumacher's seventh position yesterday. Just as in Canada and at the European GP, where Schumacher appeared to struggle on day one, the world champion was close to a second off the leaders yesterday. But he was as unconcerned by the gap as he has been on his last two early weekend outings.

"The situation in relation to the times is quite similar to what happened last week," he said. "We have concentrated on our usual programme (race set-up) and we're pretty confident. We're happy with the tyres and the conditions seem to be pretty similar to the test we did here, with the temperatures around the same."

Close on Schumacher's heels yesterday was the first of the Jordans, with Jarno Trulli at the helm. The Italian admitted on Thursday that he has struggled for pace in race trim, and yesterday the Jordan number two concentrated on fine-tuning his race set-up on his way to ninth.

"We developed a good set-up for the race distance," said Trulli.

Team-mate Heinz Harald Frentzen finished the day 13th, playing catch-up on set-up having missed the test here following his Monaco accident.