Mark Webber has kept up the trend by ensuring that another different driver has set the fastest time as testing continued at Jerez on Friday. Fortunately for the teams, it was at a sunny Jerez on this occasion as the track surface dried in the day following a huge thunderstorm overnight.
With Jerez's second meeting being the third of four pre-season tests, a spectacular storm on Thursday night made for a soaked race track and flooded many local roads, not least the motorway, which ensured two-hour journeys from hotels to the circuit for certain unfortunate team members.
Back at the track, there was no shortage of drama as the red flags flew no less than six times during the day, a record for pre-season testing in 2010 thus far. With cool and matching ambient and track temperatures of 8°C (46°F) in the morning, the circuit may have been damp but a blue sky ensured that fingers remained crossed in the pit lane following two soaking days of running so far.
Several drivers performed installation laps as the green light came on at 9 o'clock although it had turned to red just over half an hour in when the Lotus of Heikki Kovalainen stopped on the run up to Turn 9. The Finn's car, which was crashed yesterday and was repaired following an early morning parts delivery, was returned to the garage where mechanics replaced a clutch sensor as well as updating the front wing.
The sun was out by twenty past ten, unlike Kamui Kobayashi's Sauber, which remained in the garage for the majority of this unusually dry day. The second red flag flew at twenty to eleven when Lucas di Grassi lost the Virgin, very narrowly missing the wall on the exit of the Turn 12 chicane. With the session back underway ten minutes later, there was a third stoppage just two minutes in as Kobayashi, who had been last to appear on-track today, became stranded on the circuit before eventually completing just 28 laps over the course of the 8-hour session.
It was Sutil who recorded the first timed lap of the day at ten past eleven as Ferrari began to contemplate running on Slicks with Fernando Alonso, somewhat a rarity in Jerez this week. With the air and track temperatures up to more respectable figures of 11°C and 22°C respectively (52 and 72°F), the fourth stoppage arrived just after noon when the Red Bull of Webber - which dominated the day, timing wise - came to a halt between Turns 8 and 9.
Lotus - which ran with hard compound tyres and 'fairly full fuel tanks', according to Team Principal Tony Fernandes - had managed to get Kovalainen back on-track following his morning stoppage, but were forced to interrupt a long run shortly after 2 o'clock due to a cracked exhaust.
The 1Malaysia team eventually finished the day at the bottom of the timesheets, albeit just 17 thousandths of a second down on fellow rookies Virgin Racing, who were joined by GP2 driver Dani Clos in the garage and ran with Lucas di Grassi for the first time this week. The Brazilian caused the fifth red flag, though - and his second of the day - when stopping around the back of the circuit in the middle of the afternoon.
The Sauber of Kobayashi was all set to return to the track by 4 o'clock, having completed only six laps up until that point, due to a relatively small but time-consuming fuel-related issue. For the third consecutive day, the red flags flew again within the final few minutes, and were joined by the chequered.
The fourth and final day of this week's test in Jerez begins at 9am local time on Saturday (GMT +1)
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