Jerez & Bahrain Tests Day Three: Bourdais Quickest & Sand Stops Play, Again

With sand continuing to plague the Sakhir circuit in Bahrain, the only results from today’s testing to show are from Jerez where five teams were working hard prior to the season start in March. Once again, Ferrari, Toyota and BMW were forced to sit in the pitlane and wait for a break in the storm. Alas, the sand continued to blow all day and the only running allowed in Bahrain was one single installation lap. In Spain, Sebastien Bourdais led the tables in his 2008 Scuderia Toro Rosso.

Lewis Hamilton returned to the cockpit for today’s testing and although proved the McLaren to be the fastest of the 2009 cars, his lap was very closely followed by that of Sebastian Vettel in the Red Bull Racing RB5. So close in fact that the German was only 0.001s shy of the Briton on his fastest lap.

The car feels strong, very similar to last year’s car, in fact. It doesn’t take long to get used to the new buttons in the cockpit [KERS & front wing] but the real test for everyone now is to understand the slick tyres ahead of the first race in Melbourne next month. Lewis Hamilton.

Kazuki Nakajima continued in the Williams FW31 from yesterday while the new Renault was given to Fernando Alonso for today. The Renault hasn’t looked terribly quick throughout the test at Jerez so far and the results from today don’t paint a better picture. Again, the R29 was at the bottom of the timing sheets, although the team insist that they are receiving valuable feedback and that the car is working well.

Today was all about getting mileage on the car, especially with the new KERS system.

It was my first full dry day in the car and so I was able to learn a lot. We completed lots of laps, which is encouraging and now we will start working on the set-up of the car so that I can get more comfortable with it. Fernando Alonso.

Jerez Test Day Three Results Table		Lap Time Fastest Time Set	Laps Set Number Laps Set
1.	Sebastien Bourdais Scuderia Toro Rosso	1m18.493s	128 Laps
2.	Lewis Hamilton McLaren	1m20.737s	93 Laps
3.	Sebastian Vettel Red Bull Racing	1m20.738s	92 Laps
4.	Kazuki Nakajima Williams	1m20.898s	92 Laps
5.	Fernando Alonso Renault	1m21.307s	133 Laps