Sauber's Jacques Villeneuve topped the timesheets on the third day of testing at the Circuito de Jerez.
Once again the unpredictable weather conditions caused problems, with strong winds and rain showers lashing the circuit for much of the day. Although temperatures reached 16 degrees C, only in the final half-hour of the session did the rain abate, allowing the drivers a few laps on a slowly drying track.
The Swiss outfit's race engineer, Giampaolo Dall'Ara, just about summed up the feeling of frustration along the pitlane: "Today the weather was just like yesterday and the forecast for tomorrow is also not very promising," he admitted, "which makes testing a bit difficult.
"Therefore Jacques mostly used the day to further acclimatise to the car and the team. However, as soon as the track started to dry up in the afternoon we were able to do our best laps. We couldn't get a lot of references concerning aerodynamic and mechanical set-up tests, but we adapted our programme to the conditions and focused on further Michelin tyre work.
"Overall, despite of the bad weather and track conditions we still did quite a lot and the performance was pretty good."
Villeneuve completed 74 laps of the Spanish track, posting a best time of, 1:22.061.
Following yesterday (Wednesday), when Felipe Massa dominated the timesheets, it augurs well for the Swiss team, which has only recently switch to Michelin rubber.
WilliamsF1 test driver Antonio Pizzonia joined Nick Heidfeld, both drivers focussing on set-ups in the wet and semi-wet conditions.
Nick completed 96 laps, posting a best time of, 1:22.490, while Antonio completed 49 laps, with a best time of, 1:23.365.
This was the final day of testing for the BMW WilliamsF1 Team this week, though the team will be back in action at Jerez from Wednesday.
"After a rather troublesome test in Barcelona last week, we've made good progress this week in Jerez," said test team manager, Tim Newton. "Mark, Antonio and Nick all did a good job with the interim cars and, despite some rather inclement weather, all three recorded impressive mileage. On his first outing with the team, Nick settled in well and gave us some productive feedback."
"I'm really happy with the two days I've had in the car," said the German. "It's a very nice car to drive, and I was getting more familiar with it lap by lap. I think I would have benefited from some more time, and better weather to get a proper feel of how the car handles in the dry. Overall though, it's been a very productive and satisfying test."
The two Red Bull hopefuls were fairly evenly matched, with Vitantonio Liuzzi, only narrowly out-pacing Christian Klien. At the end of the day's work, the Milton Keynes outfit announced that it would be launching its first car, the RB1, on February 7. Both drivers will be hoping that they've done enough to secure a seat in the car for 2005.
Takuma Sato was the fastest of four drivers on duty for the Brackley outfit. The Japanese driver was at the wheel of the 'interim' car, while Bernoldi continued with the 2004, until he crashed out, bringing his day's work to an early end. Alan van der Merwe, who was in action yesterday, was joined by F3 star James Rossiter. Van der Merwe was particularly impressive, out-pacing several old hands, including Ralf Schumacher and Luca Badoer.
It was the first day of testing this week for Renault, which had Giancarlo Fisichella and Franck Montagny on duty.
"Although the rain meant we completed a more restricted programme than we would have done on a dry track, it nevertheless provided the opportunity to complete a large amount of useful software development," said chief test engineer, Christian Silk. "Also, Giancarlo had never driven on Michelin wet tyres before, so the conditions helped him in another aspect of his acclimatisation to our package."
McLaren was also making its Jerez 'debut' this week, the McLaren outfit bringing Alexander Wurz and Pedro de la Rosa along.
Having spent much of the season sporting a ludicrous bandana, Jarno Trulli was today sporting an even stranger fashion accessory, or so it appeared. As a result of an 'eye problem', the Italian was wearing an eye patch, and had to sit out the session as Ralf Schumacher took to the track.
Ferrari, once again, had Luca Badoer and Marc Gene on duty, the Italian quicker of the two by 1.4s. Both drivers worked on a development programme for Bridgestone in addition to evaluating "new components".
Robert Doornbos was on duty for Jordan, the Dutch driver running all of his laps when conditions were at their worst.
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