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Reigning world champion Fernando Alonso finished the third day of testing at the top of the timesheets where with rain falling through the morning at Monza, including some major storms beginning very early in the day, track conditions were treacherous.
This resulted in the McLaren team staying in the garage for the morning session meaning that Fernando didn’t actually leave left the pits for the first time until shortly after 13:30, with the circuit still wet. It was soon too dry for wet Bridgestone Potenza tyres in general, but remained damp in places, such as through the Lesmos.
As a result running on dry tyres was compromised to an extent, so the team’s work focused on long distance runs. Towards the end of the day, although the track did not fully dry, Fernando spent more time looking at set-up for Monza and completed a total of 51 laps with a time over a second faster than his nearest rival, BMW’s Robert Kubica.
Kubica also completed several laps in wet conditions in order to gather data using standard wet tyres and after the track had dried out, he worked on the set-up of the car and found some promising solutions for the team ahead of next weekends’ race
It was David Coulthard’s first day on track and he continued with tyre evaluation and also carried out a repeat of some aero testing done earlier in the week, partly to get more data and partly to validate Mark Webber’s impressions. The Red Bull racer finished third fastest, only a fraction of a second off Kubica’s time.
Felipe Massa was on duty for Ferrari today, working principally on set-up changes on his F2007, as well as on developments of aerodynamic solutions aimed specifically at this track. Felipe completed a total of 49 laps, the quickest in a time of 1.24.525, fourth fastest overall for the day.
Williams racer Nico Rosberg turned up for testing duties today only to be met by an inch of rain water on track and while the waters finally cleared over lunch, allowing the teams a two hour window of track time this afternoon, it was not enough time to complete the planned programs. Nico managed to bank 45 laps and recorded the 7th quickest time of the session with a 1:24.984.
"After a very heavy downpour which lasted for about two and a half hours this morning, the weather cleared at lunchtime leaving blue skies and temperatures reaching 25°C,” said Dickie Stanford, Test Team Manager. “During the limited window of running the weather afforded us, we continued with our set-up work prior to the race here with Nico in the car."
Due to bad weather conditions in the morning of day three, it was decided to extend the test by one day.
| Pos |
Driver |
Constructor |
Time |
Laps |
| 1 |
Fernando Alonso |
McLaren |
1m23.490 |
51 |
| 2 |
Robert Kubica |
BMW Sauber |
1m24.413 |
48 |
| 3 |
David Coulthard |
Red Bull |
1m24.453 |
52 |
| 4 |
Felipe Massa |
Ferrari |
1m24.525 |
49 |
| 5 |
Tonio Liuzzi |
Toro Rosso |
1m24.768 |
40 |
| 6 |
Jenson Button |
Honda |
1m24.918 |
61 |
| 7 |
Nico Rosberg |
Williams |
1m24.983 |
45 |
| 8 |
Giancarlo Fisichella |
Renault |
1m25.069 |
71 |
| 9 |
Ralf Schumacher |
Toyota |
1m26.175 |
44 |
| 10 |
Sakon Yamamoto |
SpykerF1 |
1m26.384 |
72 |
| 11 |
Anthony Davidson |
Super Aguri |
1m35.106 |
47 |
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