Rubens Barrichello has confirmed that six teams have posted the fastest time in as many days at Jerez as its second test session continued on Thursday. The Brazilian Williams driver led the way from Vitaly Petrov's Renault and Sebastian Vettel's Red Bull as Lotus missed half the day following a crash for Heikki Kovalainen.
With just Barcelona's four-day test remaining next week, teams and drivers continue to pray for dry weather after more rain delayed proceedings at the south-eastern Jerez on Thursday, with no less than four stoppages have come at various points throughout the day.
There was light rain falling at Jerez as the green pit lane exit light illuminated for the first time at 9am, with all drivers electing to complete installation laps. Paul di Resta was at the wheel of Force India's VJM03 once again, following a change of plan from the team which would have seen Adrian Sutil take over in the afternoon but eventually resulted in Tonio Liuzzi driving the car for the first time since last week.
The first red flag period arrived less than an hour in, as Timo Glock's Virgin suffered an off at Michelin Curve; it was a positive day for the rookie team, though, with the German pleasing his crew by placing the all CFD-developed car eighth on the final timesheets, 3.3 seconds down on leader Barrichello.
The before mentioned Brazilian was content to see a Williams on P1 for the first time in 2010, having registered a best effort of 1:27.145 to edge out newcomer Petrov by just under seven tenths in the changeable conditions. Like all teams, Williams made the best of a bad situation by completing other tasks, in this case successfully carrying out a string of practice pit-stops.
Kovalainen ended Lotus' second day last on the timesheets and firmly in the gravel trap after the Finn lost control and embedded the nose of the T127 into the tyre wall at Turn 3; with the front wing ripped off, the Norfolk outfit was forced to remain on the sidelines for the rest of the day to a shortage of parts - new components are in the process of being delivered from the squad's Norfolk base and, according to Chief Technical Officer Mike Gascoyne, should arrive in Jerez at around 2am tomorrow morning.
With air temperatures struggling to climb above anything in the low teens, a second red flag flew when officials elected to inspect the wet track surface between Turns 2 and 3, with Kovalainen's off causing the third stoppage before a fourth came within the final 20 minutes, as it had yesterday.
As the greens having flew with ten minutes left, Vettel made the top three from Rosberg, Massa and de la Rosa as di Resta was the quickest of the Force Indias, with him and team-mate Liuzzi sandwiching eighth-placed Glock. 2008 Champion Lewis Hamilton finished a quiet day tenth for McLaren ahead of Sébastien Buemi's Toro Rosso and the grounded Kovalainen, who will return with a new engine tomorrow as a preventative measure following his crash.
Testing continues at Jerez at 9am local time on Friday (GMT +1)
Series
Formula 1
Personalities
Rubens Barrichello
Teams
Williams
Other
Get your official Formula 1 tickets at Sportstadium.com
| Rubens Barrichello | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |
| More Rubens Barrichello photos | |||
English
Nederlands
Español
Italiano
