After torrential rain and lightening storms last night in Jerez (which saw the police resorting to boats on some local roads), there was bright sunshine today for the third day of the this week’s test that saw the Red Bull racer of Mark Webber at the top of the timesheets.

The Aussie driver was back driving the RB6 and began the day on extreme wet tyres, as conditions remained damp from overnight rain. He then switched to intermediate tyres and by 11 was running on dry tyres. A small mechanical issue early afternoon cost the team around two hours of running time, but Mark was able to get back out on track with plenty of time remaining and completed a series of short and long runs to test various chassis set-ups and analyse tyre degradation.

“It’s good to finally get some dry conditions and complete some proper runs on dry tyres, which we’ve done very little of with this car so far. We did 115 laps today, which is pretty good; things look promising,” Ian Morgan, Head of Race Engineering said.

“We’re certainly showing some good form in terms of reliability, but we always need to work on performance; you never know that the other teams are doing. We’re in a good position at the moment to build up to the first race – it’s close, but there’s also quite a way to go, as other teams have no doubt planned developments for Bahrain. We’re doing the work we need to do, in order to understand the car more.”

Second up for the day was the Ferrari of Fernando Alonso, who was having his fourth day of testing with the team. The Spanish driver’s programme involved testing set-up and comparing car and tyre behaviour in a variety of race situations. The full work schedule was completed before the chequered flag was waved. In total, Alonso completed 132 laps, the quickest in a time of 1.20.115.

Jenson Button was third fastest and was able to spend the majority of the day pursuing a consistent path with mechanical set-up development, despite the presence in the afternoon of an increasingly blustery wind. 

Jenson declared himself happy with the day’s progress, and his engineers have been extremely pleased with the extent to which he has been able to establish himself within the team, and the depth and scope of his feedback.  A few minor components will arrive overnight for evaluation tomorrow, but the main aim of the programme remains a continuation of today’s set-up development work.

Rookie driver Nico Hulkenberg was fourth overall, the young German spending most of the morning doing pitstop practice with the race team before moving on to a race simulation. He then followed that up with a long run for set-up work before grinding to halt on track.

“The cause of the problem which forced Nico to stop out on track towards the end of the session was hydraulic, but the part was high mileage. Nico will spend the evening working on set-ups and will continue running tomorrow for our last day in Jerez,” explained Sam Michael.

Michael Schumacher was back on track for Mercedes where he too could finally achieve some valuable dry running for the team. Michael's programme focused on developing the set-up of the MGP W01 and evaluating various changes over longer runs. The team had a positive day with Michael completing 79 laps with a quickest lap time of 1.21.437, the fifth best time overall.

"Today was a nice end to my testing days in Jerez this week and it was great to finally have some consistent dry running,” he said. “We are on schedule with our programme but at the same time, we are well aware that there is still a lot of work ahead of us. The final test in Barcelona next week will be an important test in this respect and will give us valuable information about the performance of the car."

Robert Kubica was sixth for Renault and after a total of 100 laos around the Spanish track, the Pole declared him self happy with the day as he worked on set-up and procedural work.

              
“In the morning it was damp so we just did an installation lap to check everything was working and waited for the track to dry. The conditions were quite windy, which has a big influence on the car, but we were able to test quite a lot of things so I’m pretty pleased with the day,” he said.

Adrian Sutil took over the VJM03 for Force India’s penultimate day where he completed 69 laps of the Spanish while working through a programme of long and short runs, weight distribution and race preparation. He finished seventh overall.

“Today was our first proper shot at dry running this test and it went pretty well. In the morning we did a few short runs and some set-up work and then in the afternoon moved on to longer runs and getting more information on the new tyres. At the end of the day we wanted to do a further run but unfortunately a red flag came out so we didn't do as many laps as we would have liked over the whole day,” he explained.

“The tyres at the moment are quite difficult to handle as the soft compound grains up very quickly in the low temperatures. The mediums last a bit longer but still grain after 10 or 12 laps. There's no way to avoid it at the moment but I'm not too concerned as I am sure they will handle better in the higher temperatures we'll see in the races.”

Meanwhile, due to a problem with the fuel system, BMW Sauber F1 driver Kamui Kobayashi completed just 28 laps today to finish eighth fastest overall.

“It was obviously not a perfect day, but I prefer to have a technical problem now rather than in the first race,” he said. “Although I could only complete a limited number of laps, we learned a few things on which we can build tomorrow.”

Once  the  Toro Rosso team  had  managed  to  splash  through  the  flooded  roads  and motorways to get to the track this morning, it was time to unpack the slick tyres. The weather made for a straightforward day, during which Jaime was able to complete a high mileage, running just one tyre compound throughout. On the STR5 development programme was a brake system evaluation, as well as an assessment of a few aero components. The car ran trouble-free from green light to chequered flag.

Lucas di Grassi and Heikki Kovalainen rounded out ther eleven drivers on track here today.

Pos	Driver	Constructor	Time	Laps
1	Mark Webber	Red Bull Racing	1m19.299	115
2	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1m20.115	132
3	Jenson Button	McLaren	1m20.394	101
4	Nico Hülkenberg	Williams	1m21.432	138
5	M. Schumacher	Mercedes GP	1m21.437	79
6	Robert Kubica	Renault	1m21.916	100
7	Adrian Sutil	Force India F1	1m21.939	69
8	Kamui Kobayashi	BMW Sauber	1m22.228	28
9	Jaime Alguersuari	Toro Rosso	1m22.564	120
10	Lucas di Grassi	Virgin Racing	1m23.504	34
11	Heikki Kovalainen	Lotus	1m23.521	68