Practice 3: Button fastest

Button's time, a 1m29.485s, was just off the pace of Kimi Raikkonen's fastest time in the second free practice session on Friday (1m29.355s), but with the track temperature set to rise as the day progresses the Finn's time will surely be thrashed.

Fourth quickest was the second Williams of Juan Pablo Montoya while world champion Michael Schumacher was fifth fastest, but almost a second off Button's pace. The German was the first of the big hitters to go out on track 35 minutes into the session. His running time on Friday was hampered due to a hydraulics problem on the F2004 and he admitted that he would rely on team-mate Rubens Barrichello's data to set him up for today.

Raikkonen finished the session sixth in the McLaren-Mercedes, but his car showed none of the pace from Friday's session. At least he managed to set a time, team-mate David Coulthard went out on track twice but came into the pits on both occasions and finished the session with no time to his name.

Renault duo Jarno Trulli and Fernando Alonso were seventh and eighth respectively, their soft chassis, amazing at Monaco last weekend, is no match for the stiff BARs at the Nurburgring.

Further back, Barrichello was ninth in the second Ferrari ahead of the Toyota pair of Oliver Panis and Cristiano da Matta.

With most of the drivers having accustomed themselves to the German circuit it was an incident-free session. Ralf was the most untidy locking his brakes and running wide, but Jordan's Giorgio Pantano was not far behind making hard work of his fast laps in the tempermental EJ14.