The world champion ended the afternoon third fastest after a largely uneventful hour. Schumi was only 0.198s slower than Button but didn't get within a second of his own morning time, even though the world champion was clearly trying hard as he worked through his test programme.

Kimi Raikkonen again did rather fewer laps than most of his rivals, but the Finn was one of a group of drivers who put in quick laps around half way through the session and his 1m21.586s was still the fourth best at the end of the session.

Renault's Jarno Trulli put his best lap in shortly before Raikkonen did and it was only, marginally slower - by 0.018s. This pair formed part of a closely matched group of six cars, covered by just 0.209s.

Making it three BARs in the top six, Anthony Davidson weighed in with a lap in 1m21.643s, while Juan Pablo Montoya had the quicker Williams this time - on 1m21.661s, which was still less than a tenth of a second off Raikkonen's mark.

The group was completed by Fernando Alonso in the second Renault and David Coutlhard's McLaren.

Around three tenths of a second slower came a group of three drivers headed by Ralf Schumacher in the second Williams. He lapped in 1m22.057s - 0.039s quicker than Ferrari's Rubens Barrichello and 0.110s up on Mark Webber in the top Jaguar.

Toyota twins Olivier Panis and Cristiano da Matta were over half a second slower in 13th and 14th places, but very closely matched with each other.

Felipe Massa was the quicker Sauber driver in this session, 15th fastest with a 1m1m23.043s lap, and split from team-mate Giancarlo Fisichella by Christain Klien in the second Jaguar.

Testers Bjorn Wirdheim (Jaguar) and Ricardo Zonta (Toyota) set the 18th and 19th best times, though Zonta's session came to a premature end when the car stopped out on the circuit.

Jordan's under-pressure Italian driver Giorgio Pantano lapped within 0.225s of team leader Nick Heidfeld, but the Jordans were slower than all but the Minardi trio. Gianmaria Bruni was predictably the best of the local team's runners, but Zsolt Baumgartner came close to matching his time as Bas Leinders brought up the rear.

Timo Glock didn't take part in the session after damaging the third Jordan when he crashed in the first session.