Heikki Kovalainen gave himself and his Renault team a much needed boost of confidence, one week ahead of the Malaysian Grand Prix, by posting the fastest time of the day on the final day of testing.
After yesterday's mixed weather conditions, which led to all the teams staying on for a further day, today, the sun stayed out until the early afternoon, when a shower kept the track wet until shortly after 16.00.
The Finn continued his work from Wednesday as he focused on set-up solutions. He completed a qualifying simulation at the end of the morning's running, setting the best time of the day (1:35.757).
The primary goal for the afternoon was to work on long runs. However, the programme was interrupted by a mechanical failure. The conclusions from the day's running were positive nevertheless, and the team's work this week will hopefully provide a solid baseline for the first day of practice in Malaysia, a week today.
"We completed our programme on an encouraging note after a good day's work," said Christian Silk. "We worked hard throughout the week, and we seem to be moving in the right direction.
"We made a number of changes overnight," he revealed, "and they seemed to work well out on track today. There is still a lot of progress to be made, but we are moving in the right direction, and I think we got the maximum from our week's running in the circumstances.
"Heikki seems comfortable at this track, he learned it quickly and is in good shape going into next week's Grand Prix. That was another important objective for this session, that we have achieved successfully."
Second quickest, and just 0.055s down on the Finn was Felipe Massa who was trying out various different settings on the F2007, as well as evaluating some new components and electrics. The day was entirely trouble-free for the Brazilian.
Third quickest, and no doubt of considerable concern to Spyker, not to mention several other teams, was Anthony Davidson in the Super Aguri. Although the Englishman was almost a second behind the Renault and Ferrari, he was well ahead of several, far more prominent, runners, not least the McLaren of Lewis Hamilton, yesterday's pace-setter.
The Englishman and his team used today's final day of testing to analyse the two Bridgestone Potenza tyres available and continue with set-up, control systems and aero settings ahead of next week's race.
"It was not a straight forward week for me," said Davidson. "Taku had a good couple of days when the weather was fine and the general balance of the car was good. When I took over in the afternoon (Wednesday) I was expecting a nice balance, but I couldn't get to grips with the set-up. We thought that we could work on it the following day but we had rain on and off which interrupted the test. During the dry running we were able to move the car in the right direction, but we just ran out of time.
"Today we completed half a day's running with the tyres and engine mileage we had left," he continued. "I felt more confident in the car and the lap times were quite good, but even so we have a lot of work to do on the long run balance next Friday. The test here has been very valuable for me as it is a circuit that I did not know well and I have learnt a lot from our time here this week."
"A solid week's testing with excellent reliability and a good deal learned in preparation for the forthcoming race," said Super Aguri Sporting Director, Graham Taylor. "Taku had a very good run on Wednesday and it was pleasing to see that Anthony is well on the mend from his Melbourne injury."
Fourth quickest was Nico Rosberg in the Williams, the Grove outfit continuing to make good progress and keep (rivals) Toyota in place.
"We've completed the four day test in Sepang with another day exceeding 100 laps bringing our total mileage for the four days to just over 2,100km," said Tim Newton. "Nico worked through a program of set-up changes and cooling system tests in the morning, in the afternoon the rain gave us a chance to try both types of wet tyres and wet to dry set-ups. Everyone at the test has been working hard in hot conditions for the whole week, which will pay dividends at next weekend's race."
Indeed, it was Toyota test driver Franck Montagny who finished fifth quickest, albeit 0.2s down on the Williams. On the final day here, the Frenchman's task was again to fine tune the TF107 in advance of the Malaysian Grand Prix. He needed a precautionary engine change but rapid work from the mechanics to complete the work saw him back on track just over an hour later and several set-ups were tried to give the team more vital information as the race weekend at Sepang draws near. Montagny got through the afternoon session with no technical problems but the downpour changed the programme slightly.
