Despite the fact that at times during the night it looked as though Noah GP might be the surprise contender for the slot Stefan GP is seeking, conditions at Jerez are vastly improved today allowing drivers to get down to some serious dry running.

However, despite the improved conditions there have been a number of red flag periods, the longest being when Lucas di Grassi crashed at Turn 10.

Only moments before, the team had twittered: "Grassi has pulled a 31.6s lap out already, how's that for a Friday feeling?" Sadly, shortly after that Friday feeling gave way to that Crunchie feeling.

After two days of atrocious conditions, today we are finally seeing some decent lap times with the drivers edging ever closer to the sort of pace we saw last week.

Other than di Grassi, Kovalainen, Kobayashi and Webber have all had problems out on track which resulted in red flags.

Name	Team	Laps	Time	Gap
Alonso	Ferrari	91	1:20.115	123.637 mph
Button	McLaren	50	1:20.394	0.279
Hulkenberg	Williams	104	1:21.432	1.317
Webber	Red Bull	46	1:21.684	1.569
Kubica	Renault	52	1:21.916	1.801
M Schumacher	Mercedes	41	1:21.919	1.804
Sutil	Force India	40	1:22.485	2.370
Alguersuari	Toro Rosso	64	1:22.973	2.858
Kobayashi	Sauber	6	1:25.818	5.703
Kovalainen	Lotus	32	1:26.285	6.170
di Grassi	Virgin	22	1:31.670	11.555