Formula One teams wrapped up three days of testing in Valencia
yesterday with Ferrari and McLaren still setting the pre-season
pace with their new cars.
Ferrari's world champion Kimi Raikkonen was quickest yesterday,
followed by fellow-Finn Heikki Kovalainen in the McLaren and
Brazilian Felipe Massa third fastest in the other Ferrari.
That was a reversal of Wednesday's times, when Kovalainen topped
the timesheets for the first time ahead of Massa and Raikkonen.
Massa was quickest on Tuesday.
Champions Ferrari and McLaren, who were stripped of all their
2007 constructors' points for a spying controversy involving leaked
information from their Italian rivals, between them won all of last
year's races.
BMW Sauber emerged as the third force ahead of former champions
Renault in 2007 and are looking to build on that with a first
victory this season.
However, even if pre-season tests can be misleading with teams
sometimes running light to appear more competitive, they looked
less competitive in Valencia than former partners Williams.
Japanese rookie Kazuki Nakajima was fourth fastest yesterday for
Toyota-powered Williams in his first run in the new FW30, ahead of
McLaren's championship runner-up Lewis Hamilton.
Nakajima was also the best of the rest on Wednesday, fifth
fastest behind the Ferraris and McLarens, while German team mate
Nico Rosberg was third on Tuesday behind the two Ferraris.
BMW Sauber technical director Willy Rampf was unconcerned
however.
"In terms of reliability the F1.08 is already very good," he
said in a team statement. "We have covered numerous laps without
any noteworthy problems to date.
"As far as performance is concerned, we are at the start of a
comprehensive development phase. We have analyzed the data from the
test drives so far and identified the potential areas concerned,"
he added.
"By the next test in Barcelona the car will already have
received some relevant modifications...we have set ourselves an
internal target which we aim to meet by Melbourne and I am
confident we will achieve that."
Italian Giancarlo Fisichella was 11th fastest for Force India on
Thursday, ahead of Brazilian Nelson Piquet junior -- the rookie who
replaced him at Renault.
"A new car always needs lots of set-up work and we continued
with that today, trying different approaches to improve the balance
of the car," said Piquet. "I think there is a lot of promise and
I'm looking forward to continuing working with the team next week
in Barcelona."
Briton Jenson Button tried out the new Honda for the first time,
completing 80 laps but his was the slowest of the 2008 cars.
"I am certain that this car is better than the 2007 one, also
because it is difficult to do worse," his Brazilian team mate
Rubens Barrichello told Italy's Gazzetta dello Sport.
(Agencies via Shanghai Daily January 25, 2008)