Monza Test Day Three: Hamilton Returns With Top Time

After a bout of illness, Lewis Hamilton today returned to the cockpit of his McLaren MP4-23 and set the fastest time of the day at the Monza test in Northern Italy. The Briton managed a time 0.4s faster than Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen, who edged out Giancarlo Fisichella in the Force India by 0.3s. Friday marked the final day of testing for the teams and all the drivers ran all day without sharing their duties with team mates or test drivers. In fact, all teams ran one of their race pilots and the times set were a little slower than yesterday.

Fisichella’s surprise lap was only added to by Kazuki Nakajima, who managed to haul his Williams into fourth with a 1m23.634s, just 0.002s shy of the Italian in the Force India. Jenson Button propped up the tables once again in the under-performing Honda RA108 while Robert Kubica had limited running after an off-track excursion early in the day meant his BMW spent much of the afternoon in the garage being repaired.

David Coulthard set a reasonably respectable fifth placed time while Fernando Alonso followed behind in sixth. The drivers were once again fine tuning their set up for the Italian Grand Prix in mid-September, Alonso saying he was pleased with his testing and worked hard on getting the suspension settings right as using the kerbs at Monza is important for a quick lap. Sebastien Bourdais and Timo Glock filled in seventh and eighth on the tables.

Monza Test: Day Three Times