Testing winds up at Jerez

The last test session of the season wound up at Jerez de la Frontera on Friday September 30th with seven drivers from four teams at work. Renault tester Franck Montagny set the fastest time of the day, 1:16.227, and the team again had Lucas di Grassi behind the wheel. The Brazilian development driver rounded off the times in seventh.

BAR test driver Anthony Davidson was second quickest, two and a half tenths behind Montagny. Alternating between two chassis, Davidson worked on set up, suspension and tyres. From the Young Driver Programme, James Rossiter was also on track for BAR, working on tyres, and was sixth on the time sheet.

"We have now completed our full test programme for the 2005 season," said BAR chief test engineer Mark Ellis. "This week has again seen reasonable progress with our developments for the two remaining races and also some interesting developments ahead of our 2006 programme."

Jarno Trulli was third quickest for Toyota and the team's test driver Ricardo Zonta was fourth overall. Over the three day test Trulli and Ralf Schumacher evaluated the B spec TF105 chassis and both will now use it in Japan and China. Zonta spent his time working with next year's V8 engine.

"It's interesting, actually," Zonta commented about the V8, which had its maiden outing with fellow team tester Olivier Panis in July. "When Olivier first drove the car at Jerez he was not using the engine to its full potential because it was just a shakedown test."

"But even then he predicted that a 1m20s lap should be possible around Jerez with a V8 and that it would be about 2.5s slower than a V10-engined car around here. By the second day of the test, that's exactly the time I was down to, so Olivier should take up fortune-telling!"

David Coulthard took charge of the sole Red Bull car and clocked the fifth fastest time. At Paul Ricard in France Michael Schumacher completed Ferrari's four day tyre test with a best time of 1:10.757 over 128 laps.