Driving the 2011 Mercedes MGP W02, Michael Schumacher topped the timesheets on the second day at Jerez, though Australian duo Mark Webber and Daniel Ricciardo were the quickest drivers in 2012 cars.

The Brackley-based outfit's morning programme focused on comparisons and evaluation of the soft and hard compound Pirelli tyres, while in the afternoon the German concentrated on a set-up programme with the new tyres in preparation for the debut of the 2012 car in Barcelona.

"We made the most of a reliable car today to do lots of laps and learn a lot about the new tyres, and how they perform on longer and shorter runs, and with different set-up configurations," said Schumacher. "It was a good and productive test, full of lots of useful information for the season ahead, and I am now looking forward to driving our 2012 car for the first time at the next test."

Ominously, second quickest, but quickest of the 2012 runners, was Mark Webber in the new Red Bull RB8, the Australian completing 97 laps on the way to posting a best time just 0.623s shy of Schumacher's.

"It was pretty good today," said Webber. "I think we're making good progress although, as I keep saying, it's still very early days in the concept of the car and we have a lot to get through before we race it. But it's the same for all the teams."

"We did well on the mileage today," he added. "I guess we could have done a bit more, but it was positive overall and the conditions were good to test in."

"After yesterday's brief delay we had a pretty full programme to get through today," admitted head of race engineering, Ian Morgan, "and I'm pleased to say we got through the majority of it. There were a couple of minor niggles, but nothing major, so we didn't really lose any time. Mark did some work evaluating the available Pirelli tyre compounds.

"Sebastian is in the car tomorrow and we have a large programme to get through with him. We will get Seb settled and up to speed and then work through some more aero and tyre evaluation. So, there's another busy day ahead."

There was another Australian at the top end of the timesheets, with Daniel Ricciardo completing a hundred laps on his second and last day of driving. The car ran faultlessly throughout, allowing the team to get through its programme split between short runs this morning and a longer one this afternoon, while acquiring plenty of data.