Schumacher puts Mercedes on top

Today was the first day that Mercedes' full raft of Melbourne developments had been on the car, and Schumacher wasted no time in showing their potential.

A series of qualifying-style one-lap runs this morning took him to 1m21.268s, as he beat Ferrari's Fernando Alonso by 0.346 seconds and went half a second quicker than anyone had done at Barcelona this winter before today.

Mercedes is one of the teams staying at Catalunya to test tomorrow as well, but with forecasts suggesting a wet Saturday, the team elected to put Nico Rosberg in the car for the final part of today to make sure he got some dry mileage with the latest version of the car.

Rosberg managed 19 laps to Schumacher's 67 and managed to grab third with a time half a second off the pace.

Alonso's lap to split the Mercedes also came on a qualifying-style run. Ferrari attempted a race simulation later, but it was interrupted by a red flag for Kamui Kobayashi's Sauber stopping on the circuit, although Alonso still managed 141 laps.

Most of today's top times came on qualifying practices, including Nick Heidfeld's 1m22.073s to take fourth in the Renault. He switched to longer runs for the afternoon but spent some time stuck in the garage while issues were attended to.

While Rubens Barrichello's fifth-place time for Williams came on a qualifying simulation, it was his race distance form that was most notable. The Brazilian's times only faded by around a second across each 10-12 lap stint, suggesting far less of a tyre degradation issue than had been seen on many long runs this winter.

Sauber and Toro Rosso took sixth and seventh with Kamui Kobayashi and Jaime Alguersuari, their times coming on short runs as well.

Champion team Red Bull's final day of winter testing was a low-key one. Sebastian Vettel completed a relatively low total of 63 laps, spending much of his session on runs of around five to six laps in the 1m23s/1m24s range, and avoiding the push for fast times seen from Red Bull earlier in the week. He then caused the red flag to come out with a minute to go when his car stopped at the pit exit.

Lotus was very encouraged with the performance of its latest aerodynamic parts, with Heikki Kovalainen completing a mammoth 137 laps on the way to ninth. His best time of 1m23.437s - 2.1s off the pace - came from a short run.

Force India split its day between Paul di Resta and Adrian Sutil, who were 10th and 11th.

Williams also intended to give both drivers a run, but the need for an engine change meant Pastor Maldonado only had 11 laps on track in the end.

An engine change also cost McLaren a lot of running. Jenson Button only covered 57 laps, most on short runs but none on a low-fuel pace.

All 12 teams were present as HRT unveiled its F111 in the lunch break, but the team was unable to run as some parts had yet to arrive.

Most squads have now finished their winter running for 2011, but McLaren, Williams, Ferrari, Hispania and Mercedes will stay on for a final day tomorrow.

Pos  Driver              Team/Car              Time       Gap       Laps
 1.  Michael Schumacher  Mercedes              1m21.268s            67
 2.  Fernando Alonso     Ferrari               1m21.614s  + 0.346s  141
 3.  Nico Rosberg        Mercedes              1m21.788s  + 0.520s  22
 4.  Nick Heidfeld       Renault               1m22.073s  + 0.805s  67
 5.  Rubens Barrichello  Williams-Cosworth     1m22.233s  + 0.965s  89
 6.  Kamui Kobayashi     Sauber-Ferrari        1m22.315s  + 1.047s  98
 7.  Jaime Alguersuari   Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1m22.675s  + 1.407s  72
 8.  Sebastian Vettel    Red Bull-Renault      1m22.933s  + 1.665s  64
 9.  Heikki Kovalainen   Lotus-Renault         1m23.437s  + 2.169s  138
10.  Paul di Resta       Force India-Mercedes  1m23.653s  + 2.385s  42
11.  Adrian Sutil        Force India-Mercedes  1m23.921s  + 2.653s  26
12.  Pastor Maldonado    Williams-Cosworth     1m24.108s  + 2.840s  11
13.  Jenson Button       McLaren-Mercedes      1m25.837s  + 4.569s  57
14.  Jerome D'Ambrosio   Virgin-Cosworth       1m27.375s  + 6.107s  46

All timing unofficial