Renault’s Nelson Piquet moved to the top of the timesheets in Spain as this week’s test at the Circuit de Catalunya concluded. Piquet’s best of 1m 20.076s put him four-tenths clear of McLaren’s Pedro de la Rosa.
Piquet continued with aero evaluations and suspension set-up work ahead of next weekend’s French Grand Prix. “Once again we completed the work that we had planned without any problems and we learnt a lot of things,” reported the Brazilian, who ran 112 laps.
“We continued with the programme we started yesterday by putting some new things on the car that the team hope to run in the coming races. I also had the chance to do some qualifying simulations in the afternoon, which went well. It’s nice to be top of the times, but it doesn’t really mean anything.”
Ferrari was third, keeping tabs on its great rival with Luca Badoer at the wheel, but Canadian GP winner BMW Sauber could only manage sixth best, with Nick Heidfeld lining up behind both Mark Webber and a more confident Timo Glock.
The team reported that it had made ‘considerable progress’, and revealed that that had allowed it to get Heidfeld to reconfirm Kubica’s earlier testing results regarding the general set-up.
Webber, meanwhile, took over in the cockpit of the lone RB4 for the last day of testing, working through a programme that continued the aero and mechanical evaluations initiated by official test driver Sebastien Buemi and David Coulthard.
Rubens Barrichello took the seventh spot for Honda, completing his second day behind the wheel of the RA108 after taking over from surprise returnee Anthony Davidson.
Force India was not present at the test, but will renew its battle with the nine teams that were at Magny-Cours from Friday. All ten teams are expected run at the next test, scheduled for Silverstone in the run-up to the British GP.
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