The 41 year old German Schumacher, who driving for Ross Brawn's new Mercedes team, was third quickest behind Massa and BMW Sauber's new signing Pedro De La Rosa and took over from Nico Rosberg with about an hour and a half of the Valencia session remaining, and ended up posting a time more than a second faster than his younger teammate.

According to a website, Rosberg, who drove for Williams last year before Mercedes took over world champions Brawn and signed the German, completed 39 laps and Schumacher was on the track for 40. Since the accident in Hungary in July last year, which left Massa needing life saving skull surgery, was back behind the wheel of a Formula One car in a public session for the first time.

The Brazilian Felipe Massa clocked an unofficial fastest time of one minute and 12.574 seconds as he completed 102 laps, with Spaniard De La Rosa posting 1:12.784. Schumacher's 1:12.947 put him on third position, ahead of Rosberg, who was fourth on 1:13.543. Gary Paffett, McLaren test driver was fifth fastest.

World champion Jenson Button and his predecessor Lewis Hamilton will drive on Wednesday and Tuesday. The other drivers to take part were Button's former Brawn teammate Rubens Barrichello in a Williams, Toro Rosso's Sebastien Buemi and Renault's new signing Robert Kubica.