Lewis Hamilton has come top of the testing times at Jerez on Thursday. He was 0.8 seconds quicker than Felipe Massa’s benchmark time which was set on Day One of testing. However Hamilton ran out of track later in the day, damaging his car meaning he spent the remainder of the afternoon working on his set-up.
Fisichella managed the second best time of the day. It was only his second day on the new Bridgestone tyres and shows that he has adapted well to the new rubber.
Surprisingly, Felipe Massa only managed the sixth best time, the first time he hasn’t managed to top the lap-time board in this fortnight’s testing. Massa was in fact 0.6 seconds down on his best lap from Wednesday which suggests he is testing out some different setups on the car.
Christian Klien had a mechanical problem early on. This was fixed and in the afternoon, Klien managed the seventh fastest time, just ahead of Pedro de la Rosa who was concentrating on the aerodynamic setup of the car. Nick Heidfeld made his first appearance at the Jerez test and managed the ninth fastest time, running on new dampers. Robert Kubica, who was celebrating his 22nd birthday, tested out a new gearbox and came in 11th.
Anthony Davidson did 112 laps, the most out of any driver, and managed 14th. He was mainly testing out some different suspension setups on his Super Aguri car.
The official fastest laps for each driver yesterday are as follows:
1. HAMILTON McLaren 1m18.682s
2. FISICHELLA Renault 1m19.681s
3. BARRICHELLO Honda 1m19.789s
4. ROSBERG Williams 1m19.957s
5. R SCHUMACHER Toyota 1m20.019s
6. MASSA Ferrari 1m20.030s
7. KLIEN Honda 1m20.048s
8. DE LA ROSA McLaren 1m20.134s
9. HEIDFELD BMW 1m20.161s
10. KOVALAINEN Renault 1m20.198s
11. KUBICA BMW 1m20.461s
12. BADOER Ferrari 1m20.553s
13. WEBBER Red Bull 1m20.586s
14. DAVIDSON Super Aguri 1m20.696s
15. SPEED Toro Rosso 1m21.125s
16. COULTHARD Red Bull 1m21.275s
17. KOBAYASHI Toyota 1m21.294s
