After Toro Rosso’s Sebastian Vettel topped the timesheets over the first two days, it was Webber’s turn to lead the way on Thursday.
The Australian, who will be partnered at Red Bull next season by Vettel, set a best lap time of 1:19.176 on slick tyres as teams prepare for a return to the rubber in 2009.
“We’ve had a pretty good two days here,” said Webber. “The car ran pretty reliably and we’ve clocked up some good mileage. Today we were mostly getting ready for Budapest, as well as looking at developments for a little later in the season. Yesterday we were focusing more on ‘09, and it was quite a challenging day. Today was better in terms of what we learned, mechanically and aerodynamically. It’s been a hot week for the guys working here and they’ve done a good job.”
Nelson Piquet Jr. was next with a time of 1:19.334 in his Renault, one-tenth of a second quicker than Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen.
“We have done many tests over these two days to try and understand what happened at Hockenheim and now we have a clearer idea on this matter,” Raikkonen said. “Today, the car had improved compared to yesterday and we hope to be ready for the next rounds.”
Force India’s ‘third’ driver Vitantonio Liuzzi was fourth, closely followed by McLaren’s tester Pedro de la Rosa. Liuzzi had no problems with his VJM01 and continued putting more miles on the new seamless shift gearbox, as well as doing some aerodynamic work, brake testing and in the afternoon running on the 2009 spec rubber.
Sebastien Bourdais rounded out the top six, having taken over the Toro Rosso-Ferrari STR03 from team-mate, Sebastian Vettel, who was quickest on days 1 and 2. The Frenchman began the day evaluating different brake materials and in the afternoon moved on to assessing a wing planned for use when the season heads to Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium.
Of the rest Kazuki Nakajima was seventh for Williams and he was mainly looking to next week’s Hungarian GP, tweaking the set-up on the FW30.
Timo Glock was eighth for Toyota and the German reported no ill-effects on his first day back behind the cock-pit following his big crash at Hockenheim on Sunday. Indeed he did 78 laps, his only minor issue - a mechanical problem with the fuel system late on.
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