Barcelona Test Day Three: Webber Leads McLaren

On the final day of this weekend test at the Catalan circuit, Mark Webber managed to beat the opposition and put his Red Bull Racing in the top spot. Beating the McLarens, Webber went less than 0.05s faster than Heikki Kovalainen, but it was enough to claim the fastest lap of the day and adds to Scuderia Toro Rosso’s success yesterday. Lewis Hamilton finished the day in third with Robert Kubica for BMW in fourth and Fernando Alonso in fifth in the new Renault R28.

It hasn’t been an easy test for the McLaren team, having felt the brunt of some Spanish hatred while they tried to go about the business of motor racing. But the Woking squad persevered and have had a reasonably productive weekend. Ferrari were absent from this session, but they are expected to join the others in Bahrain for the fly-away test this upcoming week.

BMW’s return to pace was compounded with Nick Heidfeld finishing in sixth behind Alonso, although the team still aren’t convinced they have fully got to grips with the F1.08. Scuderia Toro Rosso drivers Sebastian Vettel and Sebastien Bourdais have suffered a slip in pace compared to yesterday’s one-two finish, but it was to be expected as the team admitted they were doing qualifying simulations on Saturday with little fuel on-board.

Honda continue to worry with Rubens Barrichello ending his day in eleventh and team mate Jenson Button in thirteenth and last. The pair were separated by Adrian Sutil’s Force India. The final three drivers falling outside of the main group, with lap times very tightly bunched; Webber to Vettel in tenth was only 0.847s. The bottom three were all around the 1.4s mark.

Williams went home early yesterday to sort out their wing mounting problem that saw Kazuki Nakajima have an almighty accident on Friday, and Toyota and Super Aguri were also not present for the entire weekend.