Badoer quickest again in Bahrain

Badoer was again at the wheel of the old F2004 fitted with a V10 engine while teammate Felipe Massa continued working with the new 248 F1.

Both men concentrated on tyre testing for Bridgestone as well fine tuning the cars' set-up. Badoer will be replaced by Michael Schumacher tomorrow.

Briton Jenson Button and teammate Rubens Barrichello joined the test for the Honda team, taking over from test drivers Anthony Davidson and James Rossiter.

The Honda drivers continued to show the strong pace of the new RA106 car, with Button outpacing Barrichello by only 0.036 seconds.

Italian Vitantonio Liuzzi took over from Toro Rosso teammate Scott Speed as the team continued putting miles in their old RB01 car. Liuzzi's day was cut short, however, as a gearbox problem meant the RB1 was forced to miss the final 90 minutes of the session.

"It was a reasonable day with signs of performance gain and general progress," said chief engineer Laurent Mekies. "As expected, the track was much cleaner than yesterday which allowed us to be more precise in our set-up work.

"Also, track temperatures were much higher today which made for a more realistic simulation of what we can expect for the race here in three weeks time, which is particularly relevant as far as the tyres are concerned."

Today's times:

Pos  Driver        Team                      Time      Laps
 1.  Badoer        Ferrari              (B)  1:31.225   62
 2.  Button        Honda                (M)  1:31.453   87
 3.  Barrichello   Honda                (M)  1:31.489  107
 4.  Massa         Ferrari              (B)  1:31.905   68
 5.  Liuzzi        Toro Rosso-Cosworth  (M)  1:32.702   69

All Timing Unofficial