Webber fastest on Valencia day two

Testing continued at Valencia's Ricardo Tormo circuit on February 22nd with five drivers from four teams on duty. Mark Webber was the sole Williams driver present and topped the times with a 1:10.087 and the Australian racked up 154 laps. Nick Heidfeld will take over for Williams tomorrow.

Mark Webber.

Photo by Mark Gledhill.

"Mark was back in the car today carrying out systems checks in preparation for Melbourne," said test team manager Tim Newton. "He completed over 600kms but it really was too windy to do much work this afternoon. Next time Mark drives the car will be in Australia for the first race of the season. Nick will be driving for the final two days of the test."

Ralf Schumacher was the Toyota representative for the day and was second on the time sheet, nine tenths down on Webber. Schumacher Senior followed on in third for Ferrari, with teammate Rubens Barrichello in fourth. The Scuderia's programme continued with tyre work and endurance runs. Takuma Sato rounded off the times for BAR in fifth.

At Silverstone Renault was again somewhat hampered by poor weather, with snow covering the track in the morning. Slightly improved conditions in the early afternoon saw tester Franck Montagny shakedown a new R25 chassis, while race drivers Fernando Alonso and Giancarlo Fisichella practiced pit stops.

"We continued preparations for the winter Olympics during the morning at Silverstone, although the progressive improvement in conditions somewhat hampered our programme," chief test engineer Christian Silk commented wryly. "Our test will conclude tomorrow: hopefully, we will see some better weather and warmer temperatures to enable Franck to do some useful running."

McLaren was also at Silverstone on Tuesday. Kimi Raikkonen carried out a shakedown of the MP4-20 he will race in Melbourne and despite the poor weather he completed the programme, which included fuel and hydraulic checks. The test team of Pedro de la Rosa and Alex Wurz will be back on track at Valencia tomorrow with the MP4-19B cars.