While eight teams continued at Silverstone today, Toyota and Ferrari began a three-day test at Paul Ricard, using the 3E-SC Short circuit.

Between them, the two Toyota drivers completed 149 laps, just one less than Luca Badoer, who was Ferrari's sole representative at the French track.

Jarno Trulli focussed on collecting data from the new B-car package, while Ricardo Zonta ran through a full list of tyre tests.

"This is the first time that we have used this circuit layout," revealed Zonta, "so we had to work on our set-up to adjust to this.

"In the morning, the track was very dirty, with pollen and dust from the trees," he continued, "therefore, we also spent a lot of time cleaning the track. Nevertheless, we did a lot of different tyre tests and the day turned out to be productive, with my car performing well. Now we have tomorrow and Friday to focus on some long runs."

"We had a difficult morning with the track conditions and then we had some delays with my car," added Jarno Trulli. "The day was very promising, especially with the new car and in general, the testing we got through was good. Tomorrow I hope to put in even more laps to gain a feeling for the new package and to be able to make a better judgement."

"This is the first day with the B-car and although we had some small issues which caused delays, these were not directly related to the new car," revealed chief race and test engineer, Dieter Gass. "Overall it is good to have the car testing on the track. The team back in Cologne pushed hard to prepare everything in time. This new package is a consequent realization of the change we had with the front suspension.

"With this being the major new item, this allows up to fully exploit the aerodynamic and mechanical side of the front suspension," he continued. "Yet it is still too early to say anything about the performance, because we did not do enough running with it today. On the other hand, with Ricardo's car we concentrated on tyre testing and found some interesting new solutions."

Luca Badoer, at the wheel of a 248 F1, concentrated on Bridgestone tyre development. Tomorrow, Thursday, Michael Schumacher will take over from the Italian.