Ralf upbeat after promising start

Toyota driver Schumacher finished the afternoon session in third place, only behind pace-setter Lewis Hamilton in the McLaren and Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen.

The German driver, who scored his best result of the season in Hungary three weeks ago, is now hopeful of another strong showing this weekend.

"So far everything is going fine and we can be happy with our work today," said Schumacher. "We went through most of our programme despite the time lost in the second session. We worked on set-up and tyre choices and everything seemed to go well.

"The results today were encouraging with third place in second practice and we hope we can convert our form today into a strong qualifying result. It's only Friday so it's hard to tell where we are but our first target for qualifying is to get both cars in the top 10. I think we have a good chance to do well.

"My performance in qualifying and the race in Hungary showed we are capable of fighting for strong results and I hope we can do that again. Now we will focus on getting the most out of the car for qualifying, when I hope to give myself another opportunity to score good points."

Teammate Jarno Trulli completed a promising start to the weekend for Toyota, the Italian posting the fourth fastest time.

"It was a reasonable day for me today," he said. "We worked on the set-up but I had a bit of an issue getting the car exactly how I want it. I was not so happy with the balance and I felt that under braking I could not push as hard as I wanted to, so now we will work hard to find a compromise before qualifying.

"We will look at the data before practice tomorrow and work hard to improve the balance so I can get the most out of the car. I am really focused and motivated this weekend to score points again because I have had a couple of unlucky races.

"I expect to once again get into Q3 and from there I am ready to score points. The battle in the midfield is very tight and we know we cannot afford any mistakes but I am confident we can push for another strong result here."