Jerez 3: Schuey shows the way

Schumacher took over the Ferrari crashed by test driver Luca Badoer on each of the previous days of the test and found everything in good order.

"We have a very good car here, and everything worked here," he said. "It is a good sign, but we are not here to break records. It is a fantastic feeling that the car goes so well; if it runs like this in the next race..."

Schumacher was mainly working on tyres and aero parts, plus some things for 2005. He explained why he had made the trip back from Shanghai before returning east for the Japanese Grand Prix. "I wanted to do it because we have some work to do and also this is the last test I will do this year so I wanted to make sure everything was OK."

Alex Wurz set the second best time for McLaren ahead of Ralf Schumacher - who was the only driver at the test, apart from his brother, to have raced in the Chinese GP.

Michael Schumacher was 0.846s quicker than Wurz, just a couple of hundredths of a second less than the difference between the Austrian and the slowest of the other eight drivers present - Renault's Heikki Kovalainen.

Michael Schumacher (Ferrari) 1m15.650s
Alex Wurz (McLaren) 1m16.496s
Ralf Schumacher (Williams) 1m16.502s
Anthony Davidson (BAR) 1m16.577s
Franck Montagny (Renault) 1m16.640s
Jarno Trulli (Toyota) 1m16.674s
Marc Gene (Williams) 1m16.951s
Enrique Bernoldi (BAR) 1m17.215s
Pedro de la Rosa (McLaren) 1m17.215s
Heikki Kovalainen (Renault) 1m17.366s