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Ferrari duo dominate Jerez test

The Ferrari team continued with their dominance of winter testing by topping the times on the opening day of this week's session at Jerez

Felipe Massa and Luca Badoer, who topped the times during the three days of testing at Barcelona last week, were again the quickest men as Ferrari showed their greater experience with Bridgestone tyres is paying off during their initial preparations for the 2007 season.

Massa was the fastest of the two, with Badoer less than three tenths of a second behind.

Lewis Hamilton was the quickest of the non-Ferrari drivers in his McLaren, the Briton outpacing teammate Pedro de la Rosa by two tenths of a second as he continued to gather experience in a Formula One car.

Austrian Christian Klien was fourth quickest in the Honda, but nearly a second off Massa's pace. The newly-signed test driver shared the work with Briton James Rossiter, the busiest man today with 103 laps completed.

Japanese driver Kohei Hirate made his debut at the wheel of a Formula One car, testing for the Toyota team alongside the Japanese squad's new test driver Franck Montagny, fifth quickest.

"It was not a bad day," said Montagny. "I was in this car last at Silverstone in September so it has been a long time. This morning it was wet and therefore a little bit difficult to run through our programme but we did find some interesting things.

"We worked on the set-up of the car and in the afternoon we were the first ones to put on the dry, grooved tyres.

"It was quite a good experience to test these new tyres and get a feeling for them, even though on this circuit it was a little challenging because of the track conditions this morning. We followed our programme and we did a good job - the car was quite quick today."

Hirate put on a respectable performance and outpaced two more experienced drivers after 75 laps.

Anthony Davidson showed the progress of the Super Aguri team by setting the sixth fastest time of the day in the interim Honda-powered car. The British driver, however, caused one of the red flags of the day when he stopped on track at around 1pm.

The other three red flags of the day were triggered by Giancarlo Fisichella, who stopped on track around noon, BMW-Sauber's Robert Kubica going off track 15 minutes later, and Badoer also going off in the afternoon.

Today's test took place under clear skies, although early on the track was wet following some overnight showers.

Today's times:

Pos  Driver        Team                      Time      Laps
 1.  Massa         Ferrari              (B)  1:19.462   54
 2.  Badoer        Ferrari              (B)  1:19.708   77
 3.  Hamilton      McLaren-Mercedes     (B)  1:20.245   79
 4.  Klien         Honda                (B)  1:20.394   89
 5.  Montagny      Toyota               (B)  1:20.398   96
 6.  Davidson      Super Aguri-Honda    (B)  1:20.437   52
 7.  de la Rosa    McLaren-Mercedes     (B)  1:20.442   65
 8.  Rossiter      Honda                (B)  1:20.725  103
 9.  Kovalainen    Renault              (B)  1:20.784   67
10.  Webber        Red Bull-Ferrari     (B)  1:21.053   81
11.  Kubica        BMW-Sauber           (B)  1:21.079   72
12.  Ammermuller   Red Bull-Ferrari     (B)  1:21.143   74
13.  Rosberg       Williams-Toyota      (B)  1:21.182   75
14.  Fisichella    Renault              (B)  1:21.183   49
15.  Hirate        Toyota               (B)  1:21.424   75
16.  Liuzzi        Toro Rosso-Cosworth  (B)  1:21.472   96
17.  Vettel        BMW-Sauber           (B)  1:22.067   77

All Timing Unofficial

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