Felipe Massa brought the three day Silverstone test to a close by posting the fastest time of the week at the Northamptonshire track, thereby giving his tteam a much needed boost ahead of next month's British Grand Prix.

Once again, there were sporadic showers, though most of the teams still managed to complete their planned programmes.

Massa's programme for the day included experimenting with new aerodynamic and mechanical solutions and working on finding the best set-up for the F2007. The Brazilian driver covered a total of 87 laps, the quickest in a time of 1.20.805.

However, it wasn't all plain sailing for the Brazilian, who was the cause of three red flag during the course of the day, one of them following a spin into the gravel trap shortly after the session got underway.

The Italian outfit will be back on track next Wednesday at Fiorano, where Luca Badoer will carry out the shakedown of the cars that will be used in the French Grand Prix.

Second quickest, albeit 0.469s behind, was Fernando Alonso, who took over from Pedro de la Rosa. The Woking team continued to focus on aerodynamic developments, Bridgestone Potenza tyre evaluation and general set-up work for the forthcoming races. Running was severely interrupted in the morning when an oil system problem was discovered.

"This week has seen us intensively testing the MP4-22 package," said Martin Whitmarsh, "with work concentrating on aerodynamic improvements and brake material testing. Despite some inconvenient interruptions over the course of the three days - mainly due to weather, we feel confident that we have achieved a good understanding of where we are in our preparations for the next set of back-to-back races in France and Britain, and despite being unable to complete the entire programme, the work we have done has been very effective at this crucial stage of the Championship."

Third quickest was Nico Rosberg, the third driver on duty for Williams in as many days.

"Nico continued where Alex left off yesterday," said test team manager Dickie Stanford, "putting the aero upgrades through their paces in time for Magny-Cours and Silverstone.

"We've had a very positive three days here," he continued, "working through a busy test schedule with no major problems. The test team have done a really good
job. We are now off to Goodwood to run Kazuki over the weekend and we then travel to Iceland for a running car event with Nico for Hamleys."

After two days of work from Heikki Kovalainen, the team continued its programme with test driver Nelson Piquet Jr. at the wheel today. Moving forward from the data collected by Heikki, the young Brazilian firstly worked on set-up to find a comfortable balance, before beginning the development programme. He conducted a series of tyre tests to assess their performance and general consistency.

The Brazilian had a busy day, completing more than 100 laps, and the level of performance of the R27 was encouraging. At the end of the day, he finished fourth-fastest with a best lap of 1:21.357, having completed 548 km on his return to the cockpit.