Michael Schumacher made a solid start on his return to Formula One

after a three-year absence.

The seven-times champion was back in the Mercedes’ ‘Silver Arrow’ after a brief retirement following 14 seasons in Ferrari red.

After team-mate Nico Rosberg completed most of the initial set-up work on the opening day of the first test at Valencia’s Ricardo Tormo circuit, Schumacher finally hit the track with just 94 minutes of the day-long session remaining.

His return has sparked unrivalled media interest in a test, with as many photographers, camera crews and journalists in attendance as for a grand prix.

Naturally, the moment of the day was when he rolled the Mercedes W01 out of the team’s garage at 15.26pm local time, sparking a frenzy amongst the photographers and cameramen.

The 41-year-old certainly belied his age, completing 40 laps of the four kilometre track in three separate stints, noticeably eclipsing Rosberg in the second of those.

Come the conclusion, Schumacher finished third quickest of the eight drivers on show, with his best lap one minute 12.947seconds, just 0.373secs behind former Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa on his own return to the sport.

In fact, it proved to be a day for the comeback kings as Pedro de la Rosa, now with Sauber after years as a tester for McLaren and whose last race was also Brazil ‘06 along with Schumacher, split Massa and the legendary German.

Rosberg had to settle for the fourth best time of the day, more than 0.6secs adrift of Schumacher and nearly a second behind Massa.

McLaren tester Gary Paffett was fifth, followed by the Williams of Rubens Barrichello, Sebastien Buemi who only managed 18 laps in his Toro Rosso due to a gearbox issue, and then Renault’s Robert Kubica.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 at 04:02 and is filed under F1. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.