Nakajima on top as weather clears
Thursday, 21, February, 2008, 17:58
Kazuki Nakajima served further notice of the progress Williams has made over the winter by topping the times on the first day of dry testing at Barcelona on Thursday.
After two days of rain hampered teams' development work, the weather finally cooperated and a dry line soon emerged after initial dampness.
Nakajima, however, set the day's best time of 1m22.153s late in the afternoon, after taking over the FW30 from test driver Nico Hulkenberg.
McLaren duo Heikki Kovalainen (who stopped on track twice) and Pedro de la Rosa focused on aerodynamic work and finished second and third fastest respectively.
The top five were extraordinarily closely matched, with Ferrari's Felipe Massa and Williams's Nico Rosberg all lapping within 0.1s of Nakajima's benchmark.
Red Bull Racing's Mark Webber and David Coulthard were next up ahead of Luca Badoer in the second Ferrari.
Fernando Alonso spent the day carrying out set-up work with the Renault R28 and was not worried about ending up ninth fastest, half a second off the pace.
"We have been waiting for a long time to do some dry running and we made the most of it," said the Spaniard after completing 61 laps.
"The track conditions were not perfect, but they were good enough for what we wanted to test and they remained consistent for the whole day.
"We tested some small things with the car and I was happy with the performance and behaviour of the car.
"Now I'm looking forward to next week for our last three days here in Barcelona."
Team-mate Nelson Piquet Jr simulated a race distance in the afternoon and completed a whopping 105 laps.
"Finally the weather improved and we were able to do a full day's work," said the Brazilian.
"The track conditions were reasonable, and we were able to learn some things about the performance of the car in the morning.
"We did long runs in the afternoon and simulated a race distance with pit stops, which went well and the car showed good consistency."
Testing times from Barcelona (February 21)
1. NAKAJIMA Williams 1m22.153s
2. KOVALAINEN McLaren 1m22.185s
3. DE LA ROSA McLaren 1m22.208s
4. MASSA Ferrari 1m22.213s
5. ROSBERG Williams 1m22.248s
6. WEBBER Red Bull 1m22.477s
7. COULTHARD Red Bull 1m22.499s
8. BADOER Ferrari 1m22.535s
9. ALONSO Renault 1m22.657s
10. GLOCK Toyota 1m22.901s
11. PIQUET Renault 1m23.286s
12. KOBAYASHI Toyota 1m24.132s
13. HULKENBERG Williams 1m24.222s
*Taken from http://www.itv-f1.com/Tags: F1 F2008 Felipe Massa Kimi Raikkonen Fernando Alonso Renault Red Bull Toyota Trulli Ferrari Bond Barcelona |
