Free Practice 3: Schuey pips Kimi

The German, in the first outing of the 2002-spec Ferrari, looked to have the measure of most of his rivals throughout the session, setting the fastest time on his first flying lap and then besting any effort the rest came up with.

Kimi Raikkonen spent much of the first 20 minutes of the session in the McLaren garage, but in the last quarter of an hour, he went out and gradually built up his speed. With five minutes of the session remaining he was the first driver to get below 1m14s and it seemed his place at the top of the timesheets was assured.

But in the dying minutes, Schumacher went out and really hammered his F2002 ,especially in the middle sector of the circuit, to take back the top spot.

Homeboy Rubens Barrichello pleased the Paulistas by waving to the fans coming in on his installation lap, but really got down to business throughout the session. He ended up less than four tenths of Schumacher's benchmark time in last year's Ferrari.

Ralf Schumacher was the best of the Williams drivers with the fourth fastest time of the session, albeit eight tenths slower than big brother. Just behind him in fifth was the second McLaren of David Coulthard. The Scot had much of the best running early on in the session but will be hoping to improve for qualifying, which gets underway at 1600 BST.

Juan Pablo Montoya rounded out the top six, with the Renault of Jenson Button again the fastest of the non-Ferrari-McLaren-Williams big guns.

Behind the Englishman were the Sauber duo of Nick Heidfeld and Felipe Massa. Heidfeld scored an impressive third here in Brazil last year.

Jacques Villeneuve was the 10th fastest runner at a hot and sunny Interlagos - 1.4 seconds slower than Schumacher. Temperatures were around the 25 degrees Celsius mark in San Paulo, but are expected to rise.

All in all it was a fairly quite session. Enrique Bernoldi locked up his back wheels coming out of turn four and hand an elegant slide to the inside of turn five. Jordan admitted it lost its way on set-up yesterday and that was perhaps why Takuma Sato also spun in the session.

For full practice session 3 results, click here.