Rain hampers Jerez testing

Steady rain made the lap times recorded today at Jerez of limited relevance as a bulk of the third day of running saw the ten drivers lapping on intermediate and full-wet rubber. ‘Not a very significant day’ read a headline from Ferrari mid-afternoon and that summed up much of the action.

There was however an hour of dry conditions at the start of the day and this allowed Jaime Alguersuari to post a rapid lap of 1:19.919s, three hundredths of a second up on Kamui Kobayashi’s Thursday best.

With rain falling, the lap times drooped eight seconds off Alguersuari’s best, but most still managed to put in a good number of laps as they continue to develop and understand the 2010 challengers.

Pedro de la Rosa took over testing duties at Sauber Ferrari and was second fastest ahead of Adrian Sutil who had his first taste of the new Force India Mercedes. An electrical problem halted Sutil’s VJM03 mid-afternoon, restricting him to just 48 laps over the day.

Felipe Massa returned to Ferrari testing duties and was fourth ahead of Sebastian Vettel who tested the new Red Bull for the first time. Vitaly Petrov was back behind the wheel of the new R30 and posted the sixth fastest time ahead of Nico Rosberg in his Mercedes.

Rubens Barrichello was eighth for Williams Cosworth and had a busy afternoon taking his total tally of laps for the day up to 120. Lewis Hamilton was ninth in his McLaren Mercedes.

Virgin Racing returned to the test track late in the day with Lucas di Grassi handling the driving duties. The team encountered a front wing mounting problem on Thursday and had hoped to complete a full day of running today.

The required spare parts took longer than expected to arrive however, limiting the new team to just eight laps. Di Grassi’s best lap of 1:37.107 was almost ten seconds off the best times in similar wet conditions.

Testing continues at Jerez on Saturday with forecasts predicting a largely dry day of running.