On his first official outing in an F1 car, Midland third driver Adrian Sutil finished the afternoon session in an impressive 10th place out of the 28 cars that took to the track that day. He was only one place behind Malaysian GP winner Giancarlo Fisichella, and one ahead of man-of-the-moment Nico Rosberg.

Among the others lined up behind him were the likes of Kimi Raikkonen, Felipe Massa, Rubens Barrichello, Mark Webber and Juan Pablo Montoya. And none of them, unlike Adrian, can claim to be a classically-trained concert pianist...

The rules are slightly different for third drivers, in that they can use several sets of new tyres on Fridays. And the M16 and its Bridgestones were nicely dialled in from the start of practice (Christijan Albers was a very creditable 12th).

But Adrian was only 0.188s slower than BMW tester Robert Kubica, and 0.309s behind Honda third driver Anthony Davidson. Most remarkably, he was just 0.560s from Michael Schumacher, the man who began his F1 career with a great debut for Midland's predecessor, Jordan Grand Prix, way back in 1991.

For a young guy stepping straight out of F3, and with so little seat time in an F1 car, it was a mightily impressive performance. Some 15 years after Michael's arrival, does Germany have another star in the making? That's what a lot of people think, and not just those at MF1 Racing who have first-hand knowledge of his talent.

Among those keeping an eye on him on Friday was Mercedes motorsport boss Norbert Haug. For the past two seasons, Adrian was a Mercedes F3 driver, latterly as teammate to Lewis Hamilton at ASM. Haug, who is also following the fortunes of his former DTM star, Albers, at MF1, said he was impressed.

"It was very good," said Haug. "Certainly, the tyres worked very well, but he had to do the lap time, and he doesn't have a lot of experience. So being 10th in the field is quite impressive, even if it was low fuel. So my compliments to him.

"You know how exceptional Lewis was last year, and he came quite close to him. If you are close to Lewis in the same car, then you have a good potential. But, like I said, he was impressive. I think Midland is doing a good job for a small team."

Adrian himself thoroughly enjoyed his big day, which came after a 300-kilometre outing at Valencia in February to qualify for a superlicence, and just eight laps at Silverstone the previous week.

"It was special, with all the people in the stands, all the photographers, all the people around," he says of his first outing. "It was different than a normal test day, for sure. It went really well. The track was very slow, and I had to do some laps to feel my way in the car again after my F3 ride last month. Then it went better and better. We improved a bit by bit everywhere, and I finished the first session already in 10th position. It was quite good, but OK, a lot of drivers didn't go out on the track.

"The second session was getting much better as we improved the car and solved a few problems from the first one. We tested the tyres, and made some modifications to the traction control and things like that. The track got faster in the end, so with the last set of tyres, the softer ones, I was really quick and on a good lap. So that's why I was 10th! I expected about 17th or 18th. It was the first time that Midland was in the top 10, and with me in the car for the first time, it was unbelievable.

"It's always an advantage when you have a lot of tyres to test. Christijan and Tiago had only one hard or one soft compound to try, and that was it. I had double (the amount), and I could get used to it. But anyway, it was my second proper test with an F1 car, so I never expected to be this fast..."

Adrian will be back on third-man duty at the French GP at Magny-Cours in July, but in the meantime, he returns to Japan, where he's contesting the local F3 series with TOM'S Toyota - having already won a race.