Free practice 4: Ralf takes over

The Williams-BMW driver lowered the Hockenheim benchmark to 1m39.188s, edging his team mate Juan Pablo Montoya by 0.281s as BMW power began to assert its authority on the high-speed autodrome.

Ralf set his time 22 minutes into the 45-minute session, with Montoya immediately setting out to better it. The Colombian was just four hundredths down after two sectors, but backed off and bagged his time on his next flyer.

Expect lap times to dip into the 1m38s range in qualifying as the Williams/BMW/Michelin combo comes on song at a sweltering Hockenheim.

But don't rule Ferrari out of the equation. All estimates say its 050-spec engine is the second most powerful one out there and, despite not bettering his time from the first session of the day, Michael Schumacher remains in the frame and under the 1m39s mark.

Fourth behind the second Schumacher was the McLaren-Mercedes of Mika Hakkinen, with Nick Heidfeld putting in a storming lap for Sauber to push Rubens Barrichello's Ferrari into sixth.

Hakkinen's team mate David Coulthard spent the majority of the session laboriously pushing his MP4-16 back to the pit lane after spinning off in the stadium section. Schumacher's only mathematical title challenger languishes in an unrepresentative ninth on the timesheets, behind Eddie Irvine's Jaguar and the BAR-Honda of Olivier Panis.

Irvine says eighth on the grid will be a representative performance for his revised R2, and on the morning's form, that seems just about spot on. His team mate Pedro de la Rosa added weight to that assessment with 11th overall, just 0.011s off the 10th-placed Jordan-Honda of Jarno Trulli.

Kimi Raikkonen's Sauber was 12th, ahead of the Prost of Jean Alesi and Ricardo Zonta in the second of the Jordans.

Over at Benetton-Renault, it was Giancarlo Fisichella's turn to attract the bulk of the gremlins. This time he stopped on his first out lap, while Jenson Button finally managed to leave his garage and set a time good enough for 16th overall.

At the very back of the grid, Minardi's Tarso Marques whittled down the gap from first to last to just 4.721s. If that is maintained in qualifying, the Brazilian should have no fears of missing the cut for Sunday's race.

For complete free practice session 4 results, click here.