Much like yesterday, today's session at Valencia was held in chilly conditions, with the temperature barely reaching 5 degrees C (ambient) and strong icy strong winds lashing the track throughout the day.

With just five days to go before the WilliamsF1 launches its 2005 contender, Nick Heidfeld and Antonio Pizzonia continued the team's preparations for the new season, which begins in just over five weeks.

Nick focussed on traction control and chassis work, completing 109 laps on his was to posting the fastest time of the day, while Antonio also did some chassis work in addition to tyre construction testing.

This is the last head-to-head between the drivers before the team announces its line-up next Monday. Tomorrow (Thursday), Antonio will be joined by Andy Priaulx, who has been given a test drive after winning the 2004 ETCC for BMW.

"We've had another difficult day today with the wind restricting our efforts again," said test team maanager, Tim Newton. "Both Pizzonia and Heidfeld still managed to complete a considerable number of laps, however, with the pair also recording the quickest times of the session.

"The drivers were working to the same schedule, putting more mileage on the new components and evaluating set-up options. They also attempted some tyre testing but to little effect due to the poor weather conditions."

Giancarlo Fisichella was third quickest as he continued tyre development in the R24, but the unpredictable weather conditions made it almost impossible to collect reliable data. Meanwhile, Fernando Alonso struggled with the 2005 car which is still experiencing teething problems.

Fernando completed little running during the morning, owing to electrical problems, but after they had been solved, he was able to begin putting mileage on the new car. The windy conditions made it impossible to make a reliable judgement on the car's handling, but the Spaniard reinforced his positive first impressions from yesterday.

"Our programme with the R25 was delayed by electrical problems this morning," said Christian silk, "but we prefer to be cautious and thorough at this early stage of running the car, and we took time to identify and solve the problems.

"Fernando began running more normally at the end of the day, but conditions were not good at this time: I think all the teams struggled with the gusty winds today. We haven't begun working on set-up or performance runs yet, and those will be our aims for tomorrow."

David Coulthard was the quickest of three Red Bull drivers on duty, with Vitantonio and Christian Klien continuing to show good progress.

BAR had Anthony Davidson and Takuma Sato on duty, the Englishman the cause of a red flag period in the morning when he went off in the 2005 car. The Japanese driver, at the wheel of the 'concept car', completed the most laps (111).

Davidson spent the morning going through some set-up runs to find a good balance in the car. He then ran through a tyre evaluation. Sato's morning programme was to evaluate suspension changes in the other 2005 car.

The Englishman then spent the afternoon session doing long runs to evaluate the tyres alongside chassis development work, while Sato ran through a very similar programme with a chassis and systems evaluation alongside tyre testing.

Jenson Button will be in action tomorrow alongside Takuma, while Davidson will be back behind the wheel on Friday.

Ricardo Zonta was the quicker of the two Toyota test drivers on duty, out-pacing Olivier Panis by 0.857s. Both men were at the whhel of TF105s

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