While many are wondering whether he will be in the second Toyota at Magny-Cours in a fortnight's time, Ralf Schumacher served notice that there's life in the old dog yet, posting the fastest time of the day as testing got underway at Silverstone.
The German completed 71 laps today, out-pacing his nearest rival (Pedro de la Rosa) by 0.121s just days after a needless accident at Indianapolis - never the Toyota driver's happiest hunting ground - which eliminated two of his rivals.
Schumacher worked on different systems as he concentrated set-up work for next month's British. In view of the fact that he has been out-qualified by his teammate at all seven races this year he also carried out some qualifying runs. The team will continue tomorrow with Jarno Trulli at the wheel.
"In general it was a successful day," said the German, "and we made it through everything that we had planned. We were concentrating on set-up work, primarily targeted at the British Grand Prix. We also looked at some different aero settings and did some qualifying runs. The conditions were very good, particularly in the morning, although the wind picked up in the afternoon. We had one stoppage after lunch while we changed some suspension settings but overall things went well."
"We are spending the week focusing on set-up work for next month's Grand Prix," added Gerd Pfeiffer, "and today was a positive way to start. This morning went quite well, we did some tyre comparisons and we went through different set-ups. We also did work with a few different aerodynamics settings and we carried out some qualifying runs.
"All in all we made it through 51 laps before lunch," he continued. "In preparation for the afternoon session we carried out some changes to the suspension settings and we spent the rest of the day doing some more comparisons. From tomorrow we will have Jarno driving and we hope to make further progress."
Pedro de la Rosa was on duty for McLaren, the Woking team describing this week's test as the most comprehensive of the season so far. The Spaniard and World Champion Fernando Alonso are each spending time at Silverstone as the team works through an intensive engineering programme. Work today focused on developments to the MP4-22 and set-ups for the upcoming British Grand Prix.
Third quickest was Indianapolis points scorer Mark Webber. The Austrian team is evaluating a new aero update for the French Grand Prix and also worked on a tyre comparison programme for the British Grand Prix, as well as doing some general set-up work.
However, the Australian suffered a hydraulic actuator problem which cost him valuable track time. He ended the days 0.535s off Schumacher's pace but having only completed 42 laps.
Renault is another team with a massive programme planned this week, and on the first day of testing it was Heikki Kovalainen who got the programme started. The young Finn focused on car set-up in the morning, and once he had found a satisfactory balance, began the heart of the technical programme.
In spite of low grip conditions, he was able to compare a number of different aerodynamic set-ups, before making an initial comparison of the two tyre types that Bridgestone will bring to this race (the medium and hard compounds from the 2007 range).
