Panasonic Toyota Racing's driver, Ralf Schumacher topped the timesheets on the team’s final day in Le Castellet today behind the wheel of the new B spec car. Although yesterday's testing saw a short rainfall in the afternoon and the clouds threatened to rain down on the circuit all day today, the team managed to finish their scheduled programme and prepare for the upcoming race, which happens to be Ralf's 150th race.

"Today we tried different tyre specifications and set-ups for the coming races. I worked with the new car and everything is going as expected, but we had some delays while work was being done on the car and therefore I cannot say a whole lot about it yet,” Ralf said. “In general, we have improved on the tyre warm-up issue and tried various different compounds from Bridgestone. Although the coming races will be challenging because we are still developing the car and our strategy, I think the team is doing a good job and moving in the right direction."

Second up for the session was Ralf’s Ferrari driving brother Michael, the German driver completing a Bridgestone tyre development programme, covering a total of 156 laps, the quickest in 59.087, two tenths slower than Ralf.

Ricardo Zonta covered quite a distance over this test session, assisting in race preparations for Toyota and on the final day he finished third after 153 laps. Overall the test was quite productive for the team as they worked on general set-up and tyre testing, as well as smaller items like damper set-ups.

"We spent the last three days on a version of the circuit that was new for us,” said Zonta. “We did a lot of Bridgestone tyre work as well as set-up testing for Nürburging. It went pretty well and I put in over 300 laps over the three days. Today we finished the programme early getting through the test after pushing hard the whole day. I think the team can be satisfied with the work we got through during this test."

Meanwhile, Ferrari also finalized their Fiorano test where rain was once again a feature for regular driver Felipe Massa. The Brazilian driver  worked  on  development  of  new  components,  electronics  and  set-up,  with  all  running taking place on a wet track. A total of 124 laps was completed, (twelve of them on the short version of the track,) the quickest in a time of 1’01”547.

The shakedown of the 248 F1 cars that will be used in the European Grand Prix, at the Nurburgring circuit on Sunday 7th May, will be carried out by Luca Badoer on Wednesday 3rd May at the Fiorano track.