Trulli tops rain-hit test at Paul Ricard
Jarno Trulli finished off this week's test at Paul Ricard in France with the fastest time on Friday, as Formula One teams undertook a day of preparations for the Canadian Grand Prix
After two days using a layout to simulate the high-downforce demands for Monaco, the teams used a revised configuration to try out the low-downforce and heavy braking that is required for Montreal.
With the day badly impacted by rain showers, Trulli only completed 26 laps to set a best time of 1:31.360 during a break in the weather.
His time was threetenths of a second clear of Nelson Piquet in the Renault.
"With the first two days of this week's test devoted to Monaco preparations we had scheduled an intensive programme today because Montreal is a very different type of circuit and we wanted to try out different aerodynamic and mechanical solutions," said Trulli .
"You run less downforce in Montreal compared to Monaco so the car set-up is very different and we had planned a lot of work on this. It was frustrating that the rain came early in the day and meant that we could not collect any dry data."
McLaren test driver Pedro de la Rosa was third quickest, ahead of Sebastian Vettel - who will have been very encouraged by the pace of his new Toro Rosso STR3.
Felipe Massa was fifth quickest, after abandoning his running after just 19 laps because of the poor weather - and the fact that Ferrari did not want to waste any testing mileage that could be more valuable later in the season.
Nick Heidfeld was sixth fastest, but lost of some time having his car repaired after he went off the track at Turn 7 just before the lunch break, damaging the rear left suspension and the back of his car.
The only other red flag of the day was caused by Adrian Sutil, who damaged his nose cone with an incident in the final half hour of running.
"This afternoon was very wet until the sun came out towards the end of the day," said Sutil. "As such we started on extreme wets and got in a couple of runs to try out the wet set-up.
"We did some starts and everything was OK, but with these conditions it is very difficult to draw any real conclusions."
Today's times:
Pos Driver Team Time Laps 1. Trulli Toyota (B) 1:31.360 26 2. Piquet Renault (B) 1:31.634 60 3. de la Rosa McLaren-Mercedes (B) 1:32.143 53 4. Vettel Toro Rosso-Ferrari (B) 1:32.480 49 5. Massa Ferrari (B) 1:33.246 19 6. Heidfeld BMW-Sauber (B) 1:33.371 30 7. Buemi Red Bull-Renault (B) 1:34.064 16 8. Fisichella Force India-Ferrari (B) 1:34.071 31 9. Button Honda (B) 1:36.501 19 10. Sutil Force India-Ferrari (B) 1:43.877 13 11. Hulkenberg Williams (B) 1:44.741 35 All Timing Unofficial
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