British Grand Prix winner Lewis Hamilton led the way in the wet again as Formula One teams tested at Germany’s Hockenheim circuit for the first time since 1993.
The 23-year-old McLaren driver, who leads a three-way tie with Ferrari’s Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen at the top of the standings halfway through the season, lapped the venue for next week’s German Grand Prix in one minute 15.483 seconds.
“We’re going to continue to improve the car and Ferrari are going to fight back, that’s for sure,” he said.
“No-one can say how competitive we’ll be in Hockenheim, but I’ll be disappointed if we’re not and I also recognise that we’ve actually got to really keep pushing hard.
“They (Ferrari) are going to be back and fighting…we’ll be bolting bits on our car to make it better and so will they. They’ve got two very quick and committed drivers so we are in for real tough competition.”
McLaren used the test to run a new aerodynamic dorsal fin, similar to those used by Renault, Red Bull, Toro Rosso and Force India this season, on top of the engine cover of the MP4-23 car.
The British Grand Prix winner was 3-10ths faster than Kimi Raikkonen in the Ferrari. Nico Rosberg was third quickest in the Williams with Adrian Sutil a surprising fourth for Force India.
“It was quite a good day, we could do lots of laps without any real problems,” said Sutil. “It was disturbed by the rain quite a bit but at least we did as much dry running as we could have done. I like the circuit here - the last time I drove it was in 2005 in a Formula 3 car so I was really looking forward to the first go today with the F1 car.”
Sebastien Bourdais rounded out the top five for Toro Rosso. He spent the day comparing the two types of dry weather tire which will be used next weekend as well as testing a new front wing, fuel and brake systems.
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