Schumacher goes even faster at Jerez

After setting a blistering pace on Wednesday, the seven-time champion went even faster today, posting a quickest lap of 1:15.688, just 0.033 seconds off the track record, set by himself in 2004 with a V10-powered car.

Schumacher, in what is likely to be his final test before he retires from the sport at the end of the season, was also the busiest man with 104 laps, as he focused on tyre testing for the Brazilian Grand Prix.

The Ferrari driver was over a whole second faster than Lewis Hamilton, who shone in his McLaren, outpacing Pedro de la Rosa by nearly half a second after 73 laps. The Briton, concentrating on a development programme for 2007, had a productive session, covering 73 laps.

De la Rosa, meanwhile, worked on a tyre programme for the Interlagos race, completing 70 laps on his way to the fifth quickest time of the day.

"I did some tyre work and found a couple of interesting ones so we will see. But this track is a bit hard to judge," said de la Rosa, who is yet to be confirmed for the Brazilian Grand Prix.

"I hope I will (race) but nothing is confirmed yet," he added.

The McLaren duo were split by BMW Sauber's Robert Kubica, who continued working with two different chassis as the only driver for the German squad.

The Pole caused the first red flag of the day when he stopped on track at the same time as Williams' Narain Karthikeyan as the test got underway.

Karthikeyan stopped again later on the day as his team worked again with the Toyota engines they will use next season. Teammate Alex Wurz also caused a red flag when he stopped on track around noon.

Toyota's Ricardo Zonta and Olivier Panis forced the session to be stopped one time each after suffering apparent engine problems.

Today's times:

Pos  Driver        Team                      Time     Laps
 1.  M.Schumacher  Ferrari              (B)  1:15.688  104
 2.  Hamilton      McLaren-Mercedes     (M)  1:16.811   73
 3.  Kubica        BMW-Sauber           (M)  1:17.015   98
 4.  Badoer        Ferrari              (B)  1:17.243   76
 5.  de la Rosa    McLaren-Mercedes     (M)  1:17.300   70
 6.  Zonta         Toyota               (B)  1:17.488   73
 7.  Panis         Toyota               (B)  1:17.801   92
 8.  Wurz          Williams-Toyota      (B)  1:18.267   79
 9.  Karthikeyan   Williams-Toyota      (B)  1:20.450   61

All Timing Unofficial