McLaren drier Lewis Hamilton topped the timesheets for the final day here at the Monza circuit where teams enjoyed yet another sunny day as they prepared for the upcoming Belgian and Italian GP’s. Hamilton’s best was almost four tenths faster than the Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen, who clocked the second best time of the day.

Giancarlo Fisichella was a surprising third for Force India, the Italian driver continuing the important evaluation of set-ups and wing levels specifically for the Italian event, his home Grand Prix, together with work to optimise balance and braking over the kerbs. Again the VJM01 ran faultlessly, allowing Giancarlo to complete more than 600km and bring the total test mileage to over 1,700km.

'Today we made some positive steps forward for the Italian Grand Prix, particularly with the balance and set-up,” Fisi said. “I could push, particularly in the afternoon and the pace over the longer runs was also good. You never know what the other teams are doing with their own programs, but I think the race will be very close between us and Honda. I think we've made good progress here.'

Fourth fastest overall was the Williams of Kazuki Nakajima followed by the Red Bull of David Coulthard, who had taken over from teammate Mark Webber for the final day of the penultimate test of the season. On the agenda was pre-Italian GP race preparation, with David concentrating on testing mechanical set-ups specifically for Monza, finding a reasonable balance on the RB4. Some performance related work was carried out in the afternoon, when the track conditions were at their hottest and slowest.

“This three day test has produced positive results for us,” commented Chief Test Engineer, Ian Morgan. “We can be particularly satisfied that the car ran one hundred percent reliably on track throughout and we completed over eighteen hundred kilometres, the most of any team here, with today being particularly busy.”

Alonso was sixth for Renault, almost a second behind his former teammate…

"We spent the day looking at the set-up and completing all the usual Monza-specific work because this place is so different to all the other tracks that we run at,” said Christian Silk. “We continued with our race preparation programme, collecting data and found some very positive directions with the set-up, so we are in reasonable shape going into the race here."

	DRIVER	TEAM	BEST	LAPS
1	HAMILTON	McLaren	1 :22.967	97
2	RAIKKONEN	Ferrari	1 :23.371	79
3	FISICHELLA	Force India	1 :23.632	114
4	NAKAJIMA	Williams	1 :23.634	99
5	COULTHARD	Red Bull Racing	1 :23.737	120
6	ALONSO	Renault	1 :23.820	80
7	BOURDAIS	Toro Rosso	1 :23.865	77
8	GLOCK	Toyota	1 :23.897	79
9	KUBICA	BMW	1 :24.089	56
10	BUTTON	Honda	1 :24.321	96