Ralf Tops the Times at Silverstone - Final Day

German Ralf Schumacher finished on top of the timesheets on the final day of testing at the Silverstone circuit on Thursday.

The Williams driver, who was third in last Sunday's San Marino Grand Prix, continued with the development of the BMW-powered FW24 chassis, finishing less than two tenths of a second ahead of Briton Jenson Button in the only Renault on track.

"Another successful day for us, in spite of this afternoon's weather," said Mike Gascoyne, Renault's technical director. "Overall, we have had a very productive three days' work in preparation for Barcelona. Jenson is extremely pleased with the car's competitiveness."

Button, quickest on the first two days of work at Silverstone, continued testing different Michelin tyre compounds, and edged Frenchman Olivier Panis in the first of the British American Racing cars.

Jordan were in action again with their two drivers, Italian Giancarlo Fisichella being quicker than teammate Takuma Sato and Jacques Villeneuve in the Honda-powered BAR. Brazilian Felipe Massa was eighth fastest in his first visit to the British circuit, the Sauber driver taking over from Nick Heidfeld at the wheel of the C21.

"Silverstone was a new circuit for me and I really like it," said Massa. "There are quite a lot of quick corners and it is not so easy to get familiar with, but I was happy to be very close to Nick's lap time from yesterday. That was not such a bad beginning.

"We worked on the balance of my car and also we have done some good work here this week, which will help us in Spain. This test has also allowed me to learn the Silverstone circuit which most of the other drivers know so well, before the British Grand Prix."

Spaniard Pedro de la Rosa worked for the Jaguar team after replacing teammate Eddie Irvine, while Heinz-Harald Frentzen completed the Arrows team's preparations for the upcoming Spanish Grand Prix.

"It was good to complete the test's full schedule today and although we had some down-time late this morning due to a gearbox problem, we were able to fix that and get some really valuable data for Barcelona next weekend," said Graham Taylor, Arrows' chief engineer.

"We mainly focused on traction control and launch control today which is instantly beneficial to us. I think it's fair to say we now go to Barcelona benefiting from some good testing mileage and hopefully we'll have ironed out some of the glitches that we had at the start of the season."

Australian Mark Webber was the slowest man today with the Minardi, more than four seconds off Schumacher's pace.

Today's times:

Pos Driver Team-Engine Tyres Time Laps 1. R.Schumacher Williams-BMW (M) 1:22.142 42 2. Button Renault (M) 1:22.295 24 3 Panis BAR-Honda (B) 1:22.377 45 4. Gene Williams-BMW (M) 1:22.406 54 5. Fisichella Jordan-Honda (B) 1:22.524 54 6. Sato Jordan-Honda (M) 1:22.890 47 7. Villeneuve BAR-Honda (B) 1:22.970 50 8. Massa Sauber-Petronas (B) 1:23.375 45 9. De la Rosa Jaguar-Cosworth (M) 1:23.678 27 10. Frentzen Arrows-Cosworth (B) 1:24.630 32 11. Webber Minardi-Asiatech (M) 1:26.203 21 All Timing Unofficial

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