McLaren's Lewis Hamilton edged out the Ferraris of World Champions Kimi Raikkonen and Michael Schumacher as the final pre-season test got underway at Barcelona today.

With the track already wet from overnight rain, matters weren't helped by a further downpour this morning. However, as the day continued, conditions began to improve, and though it remained overcast, the ten teams on duty were able to test in the dry.

Hamilton was joined by his 208 teammate, Heikki Kovalainen as the Woking outfit spent the morning practising pit stop procedures for its race team. In the afternoon, on the drying track, the team carried out final evaluations of new components and fine tuned set ups for the start of the season.

Between them, the Woking duo completed 149 laps, with Hamilton posting a best time just 0.043s quicker than Raikkonen and 0.152s quicker than Schumacher.

After not being able to run last week, courtesy of the difficult weather conditions, Raikkonen was delighted to be able to return to work today at the wheel of an F2008 fitted with the latest aerodynamic updates. He and Schumacher completed 165 laps, suffering no problems during the course of the day.

Once again, Williams was impressive, with Kazuki Nakajima finishing fourth and teammate Nico Rosberg sixth on the timesheets. "This morning's rain hampered Kazuki's running somewhat," admitted Test Team Manager, Dickie Stanford, "but the drier conditions in the afternoon allowed him to do some set-up work. Nico
focussed on engine system checks and successfully completed a race run towards the end of the day."

Renault had Fernando Alonso and Nelson Piquet on duty, along with members of the race team as the team conducts its final rehearsal before travelling to the opening Grand Prix in Melbourne in three weeks time.

The French team was therefore operating with a Grand Prix set-up and concentrated on running through race procedures. Having endured wet conditions during the previous week, it was not until the middle of the morning that the team was able to switch to dry tyres. The Enstone-based outfit was still able to conduct race simulation work in the morning and ran through grid procedures as both drivers sampled the wet conditions early on. For the afternoon, the conditions improved and the focus shifted to pit- stop practice. In all close to 20 pit stops were carried out.

"We spent most of the day doing pit stop practice with the mechanics and everything went ok; no problems," said Alonso. "It was important to do this to get everybody ready for the first race in Australia. The track was wet in the morning, just like last week, but it did not affect what we were working on and we are happy with the work we completed."

"Today was a chance for the team to try out its procedures and to prepare for the first race of the season," added Piquet. "We did some wet-weather running in the morning, but it was all part of the simulation work we had planned and was mainly for the engineers to learn about strategy. We were only simulating procedures, so we were not really pushing that much today. Towards the end of the day we were able to do a little bit of work on the performance of the car and started looking at the set-up, which we will continue tomorrow."

"Obviously the weather was not great again," said admitted Christian Silk, "but it did not affect our programmes. We did some race simulation work in the morning, and pit-stop work in the afternoon, which was all fine. Towards the end of the day we managed to get out for a final run to get a feel for the balance of the car and that went well. So a good first day's testing, which should put us in a good position to get on with the main programme tomorrow."