Motor Sport: Felipe Massa denied Michael Schumacher the honour of finishing the final practice session of his 16-year Formula One career on a high.
Ahead of tomorrow's Brazilian Grand Prix, the retiring Schumacher was forced to settle for the second fastest time around the 4.3km Interlagos circuit behind Ferrari team-mate Massa.
The duo, though, appear on course for an all-Ferrari front row in qualifying if they continue to maintain their flying pace.
In the dying stages of the hour-long session, Massa pipped seven-times world champion Schumacher by two tenths of a second with a time of one minute 11.443 seconds.
Both Massa and Schumacher shattered last year's pole position time set by Fernando Alonso, with Massa half-a-second quicker.
The 25-year-old Spaniard was forced to settle for seventh quickest in his Renault, almost 1.3secs adrift of Brazilian Massa, clearly enjoying his time on home turf.
However, Alonso knows he can play it safe this weekend as he needs just one more point to clinch back-to-back championships.
But with Ferrari ideally needing a one-two in tomorrow's race to stand a chance of winning the constructors' championship in which they trail Renault by nine points, their two drivers showed they are in no mood to mess around.
On his first flying lap, and with the session just over 20 minutes old, Schumacher set the fastest time at that stage of 1:13.706.
The following lap, he smashed that by more than six tenths, and at that point his nearest rival was Kimi Raikkonen more than nine tenths adrift.
After Massa became the first driver under 73 seconds, Schumacher's return to the track saw him spin at Juncao.
That proved a momentary blip, however, as he continued to set the quickest time on each of his next four laps before finally dipping under the 72-second mark.
The German appeared poised for quickest in practice at the time until the late burst from Massa, with the nearest rival being Jenson Button in his Honda, who was almost nine tenths down.
BMW Sauber's Robert Kubica was fourth fastest, followed by the second Renault of Giancarlo Fisichella, Rubens Barrichello in his Honda, and then Alonso. David Coulthard was left languishing in 19th for Red Bull Racing, more than 2.5secs behind.