Barcelona Test: Pérez on top

Day three of F1’s final pre-season test saw Sergio Pérez making the headlines as he set the fastest time at the wheel of his Sauber C30.

The Mexican driver was faster than Ferrari’s Felipe Massa and Red Bull’s Mark Webber. The fastest times of the day were set in the morning as the afternoon was mainly dedicated to race simulations for most of the teams.

Pérez’ final day of testing was slightly disrupted by a mechanical problem in the last hour of practice. His car stopped at the pit exit and had to be pushed back into the Sauber garage. He still managed to rejoin the track in the closing moments of the session.

Despite a couple of mechanical problems – not KERS-related as the Williams team had decided not to run the system today - Rubens Barrichello set the fourth fastest time. Michael Schumacher rounded off the top five for Mercedes.

Renault split his day between its two drivers today. Vitaly Petrov drove this morning but lost some track time because of a KERS problem. Nick Heidfeld took over in the afternoon and set the sixth fastest time. The German’s program consisted of short runs on new and scrubbed sets of tyres.

Lotus had some more reliability woes today as it had to change its T128’s gearbox in the course of the day. The team then detected a water leak. These problems meant that Trulli lost very valuable track time. He could only complete 6 laps and had to hand the wheel over to teammate Kovalainen in the afternoon.

All twelve teams will be on track tomorrow.

HRT will be unveiling its new car and running it for the very first time.

Fastest lap times of the day: