Test update - Silverstone 13 April.

Day three of the current Silverstone test was dominated by Ricardo Zonta's accident but, for his rivals, there was much to feel good about.

Michael Schumacher topped the times for Ferrari, despite it being his fist day of running with the team this week. The German left the venue with much on his mind at the end of the day, but expressed confidence that he could be competitive in round four of the championship there next weekend.

Brother Ralf was also well up the order, having led the way for much of the day. He was eventually overtaken by Michael, Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Mika Hakkinen, but was happy to have finally got some dry running in at the end of the session.

''Fortunately, we were blessed with better weather today,'' he said, ''and that allowed for drier running in the afternoon. I am pleased with the performance of the Williams, although there are still areas for improvement, particularly on set-up. We still have a day's testing to do tomorrow [Friday], and I'm looking forward to racing here next week.''

Team-mate Jenson Button also enjoyed a more productive day, finally free of the mechanical problems which kept him in the pits for large chunks of Wednesday.

''This was a better day than yesterday,'' he confirmed, ''The drier track has obviously helped, and I didn't suffer any real problems today. The past three days have highlighted the importance of testing as far as my development is concerned and, given the encouraging performance of the car, I think the team is in good shape as we build up to the British Grand Prix.''

Between the two Williams cars, and mixing it with the likes of Benetton and McLaren, Pedro de la Rosa placed his Arrows fifth in the times. Both the Spaniard and team-mate Jos Verstappen were able to work on race set-ups as the track dried in the afternoon, having lost a couple of hours in the aftermath of Zonta's accident.

Sauber, too, felt that it was making progress despite the delays, and having to change a engine in Mika Salo's car after it reached expiry, and managed to complete a race distance with Pedro Diniz in the afternoon session.

''The weather was better today, and we were finally able to get some running on a dry track,'' revealed test team manager Jacky Eeckelaert, ''Mika's test went well, while Pedro covered the scheduled race distance run to test out the aerodynamic configuration that we first tried in practice and qualifying - but did not race - at Imola. This test also went without any problems, and we did a lot of valuable back-to-back running on different tyre compounds.''

Jaguar had less of a free run, suffering problems on both cars before Eddie Irvine clocked 1min 27.71secs in the afternoon to leave him in twelfth place, one ahead of team-mate Johnny Herbert. Both drivers ran with the new engine management software mandated by the FIA, although Herbert's morning running was interrupted by barrier repairs following Zonta's incident.

The test continues into a fourth day today [Friday].