Clearly spurred on by the news that he is to replace Ralf Schumacher in next weekend's German GP, Antonio Pizzonia wrapped up the final day of testing at Jerez de la Frontera by posting the fastest time of the day.
Once again, weather conditions were ideal, with blue skies and temperatures reaching 36 degrees C. Though occasional high winds caused problems as teams tried new aerodynamic solutions.
Antonio and Marc Gene, focussed on tyre evaluations and traction control tests for WilliamsF1, looking ahead to next month's Hungarian Grand Prix
Second quickest, and just fifteen-thousandths off the Brazilian's pace, was Michael Schumacher. The German continued working on set-up, tyres and new aerodynamic components.
It was another difficult day for Takuma Sato, the Japanese suffering further gearbox problems which severely limited his track-time. In the afternoon, as he tried a new aerodynamic package he suffered an engine failure, that brought his programme to an early conclusion. That said, he still managed to post the third fastest time of the day, narrowly outpacing Anthony Davidson who was working on chassis ballast evaluations alongside a front suspension test.
Ricardo Zonta was on duty for Toyota, the Brazilian getting his first run in the heavily revised TF104B. "It's nice to have tests like that," said Ricardo, "when everything works well and there's no sitting around because of problems with the car. We now head to Hockenheim and as a team we are very optimistic about the TF104B. We need something to produce results, and we hope that is exactly what we're going to have."
Jaguar had Mark Webber and Christian Klien on duty. Between them the Australian and the Austrian completed 176, finishing seventh and tenth quickest.
On his second F1 run, Heikki Kovalainen was extremely impressive, posting a best time just 0.904s off Pizzonia's pace. The Finn was joined by regular Renault tester, Franck Montagny.
Franck spent the day testing new aerodynamic parts, and completing back-to-back testing of these components. Unfortunately, windy conditions made it difficult to obtain a conclusive answer. He also conducted a small amount of tyre development.
Heikki continued doing set-up work with the car, and indeed his programme was increased during the day to include specific set-up work for Hockenheim. Both drivers continued running the engine evolutions tested yesterday. Neither experienced any problems, and gave positive feedback.
"It was another hard-working day to conclude a very productive week here in Spain," said chief test engineer, Christian Silk. "Franck spent the day conducting long runs and putting miles on the engine; we tried to complete some tyre development, but this was unfortunately spoiled by numerous red flags. Heikki settled well once again, and his lap-times were both competitive and consistent. We took the step of increasing his programme, and obtained very good results. Our development work this week has proved extremely positive, and Heikki has acquitted himself very well on his first major test with the team."
McLaren had Pedro de la Rosa and Alexander Wurz on duty, the Woking duo once again running MP4-19s.
The next scheduled test takes place at the Autodromo Nazionale, Monza, beginning September 1.
Times
sign in