FORUMLA ONE/British Grand Prix: Justin Hynes at Silverstone Midway through yesterday's first free practice session ahead of the British Grand Prix, peering through the misty rain into the Arrows garage was like looking at a still-life tableau.

In the foreground, three orange and black A22 Formula One cars, stranded on axle stands, innards exposed as engine covers lay propped against the walls of the garage. In the background, shady figures seemingly frozen in time - Arrows mechanics, looking on mystified as, out in the driving rain, their opposition frolicked.

Behind the garages, in the team's motor-home, sat Heinz Harald Frentzen and Enrique Bernoldi, suited up and ready to roll, but like their crew apparently frozen in time, confined to the confines of the marquee by the ruling of a London judge and by Niki's Lauda's not unreasonable request that Arrows boss Tom Walkinshaw hand over the $4.7 million he owes the Jaguar Racing and Cosworth Racing boss for an engine supply.

And the situation continued throughout the day. Through the two hours of free practice, while Rubens Barrichello was proving yet again how much he enjoys the wet by blasting his Ferrari to the top of the timesheet, the Arrows drivers and their embattled boss kept warm and dry in the motorhome, fighting back the siege of journalists swarming around the entrance.

Warm and dry they may have been, but it is cold comfort for the more than 300 Arrows workers who today are no nearer to finding out if they will have jobs to do at tomorrow's race or, worse, for the rest of the season.

On Thursday, the team lost a high court action taken to establish whether they could trade on one of their major assets, the TV revenue due to the team from the sport. That was the bait Walkinshaw wanted to use to attract new sponsors to his financially-troubled team, but the lure was removed from the hook by a high court judge, who ruled that in light of the debts owed by the team, no such transaction could take place.

The result left Walkinshaw searching overnight for the $5 million owed to engine suppliers Cosworth if his team were to race at this weekend's grand prix. Whether the Scot has found the money and handed it over to Cosworth boss remains to be seen. The team's cars didn't appear for scrutiny on Thursday, which should have ruled them out of the race, but Walkinshaw applied for and received an extension on that until yesterday morning. Both Arrows cars passed yesterday's inspection, yet never rolled a wheel on the circuit, leading some to speculate that Cosworth was withholding the ECU's (engine control units) of the Cosworths from Arrows until a cheque was handed over.

As of yesterday evening, Walkinshaw had made no statement regarding the team's participation in either of this morning's practice sessions or this afternoon's one-hour qualifying.

Ahead of that qualifying session, it was Barrichello who set down a marker, the Brazilian setting the day's fastest time, some four-tenths ahead of team-mate Michael Schumacher who, unusually, struggled in the very wet morning session, spinning out early on.

"Considering I only drove for one hour of practice today, I think our performance is reasonable," said the German, whose record around Silverstone, unusually for him, features just a single win from 10 attempts, and that coming four years ago.

If today does dawn sunny and bright, it won't please Barrichello. The Brazilian, brimful of confidence after scoring only his second career grand prix win at the Nurburgring a fortnight ago, showed why he has earned a reputation as one of the grid's foremost wet-weather specialists.

Barrichello was quickest in the rain-drenched morning session and even when the track began to dry in the latter part of the second hour, the European GP winner remained quickest despite switching to intermediate tyres.

"I am happy with the work we've done today," he said. "We based our programme on the data we acquired at the test we did here a month ago and were able to do a good job on track, where the conditions were changing very quickly."

For once the conditions also seemed to suit Jordan, with Giancarlo Fisichella finishing the day with the third-quickest time, though with the team's headquarters just across the road and hordes of Jordan sponsors in attendance, there was a hint of low-fuelled showboating about the Italian's performance.

Team-mate Takuma Sato, renowned for his skills in the wet, got his first real chance this season to demonstrate his ability and wound up two places behind Fisichella.

Eddie Irvine, at this stage a wizened old Silverstone hand, didn't spend any time getting back into the rhythm of Silverstone's high-speed straights and mixture of fast and slow turns, but did, at times, find himself out of step with his new Jaguar R3B, a radical redesign of the car the Irishman has complained so much about through the first half of the season.

By the end of the working day, Irvine, who had risen into the top five in the morning session, had slipped back to 15th.

The Irishman though would not be drawn on whether the new R3B is the saviour it has painted.

"It's a little bit better in some areas but there are issues with it," he said. "We haven't had the chance to do any set-up work with it, because it means running the car in a whole different way and we haven't really done any running."