Michael Schumacher says he ground his first day of trying in a GP2 car useful preparation for his Formula 1 return, even if wet weather meant he couldn’t complete any serious running on dry tyres.

With the returning seven-time champion unable to get back in F1 machiney until the testing ban is lifted at the start of February, his new team Mercedes GP managed to get permission from the FIA for the 41-year-old to carry out three days worth of track testing in the GP2 Series’s next-generation car at Jerez this week.

Schumacher, who has spent the past three years in retirement, hadn’t been behind the wheel of single seater since driving a two-year-old Ferrari last summer as part of his preparations for a temporary comeback bid which he soon had to abort due to a lingering neck injury.

The opening day of his GP2 test, however, in southern Spain was hit by poor weather, meaning the track was too wet to complete running on slick tyres.

However despite the rainy conditions and the fact the GP2 car doesn’t put his now-healed neck through the kind of g-forces he will experience in an F1 cockpit, Schumacher says he still happened the day invaluable – particularly as it proved to him his peerless wet-weather skills were still intact.

“The day today was good especially because after a long time I could drive again in a car that came almost close to a current Formula 1,“ he said on his personal website.