Ralf hopes to build on strong Friday

"Our day went well," said Schumacher after posting the third fastest time in the afternoon's practice session.

"Both sessions were positive and we had no technical problems so we are quite happy with what we have achieved so far. The wind was strong both in the morning and the afternoon so that made it difficult to make accurate comparisons.

"But we made it through everything that we had planned so it sets us up well for the rest of the weekend. We were quite quick in the afternoon but let's wait and see how we fare tomorrow. We might be lucky with the weather and if it rains then anything can happen.

"But for now we should aim to qualify both cars in the top ten and then take it from there," the German added.

Schumacher finished two places ahead of teammate Jarno Trulli, as Toyota enjoyed one of their strongest Fridays of the season.

Trulli was equally encouraged by his times, despite the wind making the driving very tricky at the British track.

"This is always an interesting weekend because you have to keep a close eye on the weather which can change very quickly," he said. "You can never expect consistent conditions and it's fair to say we have seen typical English weather so far.

"That has a major influence on the performance of the car. Even when it's not raining the wind can be strong around here and that affects work on set-up. For that reason we concentrated on testing the two compounds of tyres, which went well.

"We set some encouraging laptimes and our package seems to work quite well on this type of circuit because we were competitive in the test here two weeks ago. So things are looking positive for tomorrow and we should hope for a good race."