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Hamilton fastest on final day of testing

Lewis Hamilton finished Formula One action for the year with the fastest time during testing at Jerez in Spain on Friday, although all eyes were on his teammate Fernando Alonso

Hamilton shrugged off the huge attention surrounding the McLaren debut of Alonso to continue his programme of set-up work and tyre evaluation, to edge out Renault's Heikki Kovalainen by just more than one hundredth of a second.

McLaren had tried to keep everyone away from Alonso over the course of the day, and interestingly the team did not fit one of the timing transponders on to his car, which transmits live timing to the media centre's timing screens.

Nevertheless, the teams' timing systems showed that he completed 95 laps and ended up third quickest overall. He was just more than one quarter of a second slower than Hamilton after a pretty incident-free day.

The same could not be said for Kovalainen, who caused two red flags when he stopped on track with suspected mechanical problems - once at 12:45pm and again at 4:00pm.

Giancarlo Fisichella was fourth quickest, just ahead of Honda Racing's Christian Klien - who himself had had a bit of a transponder issue earlier in the day.

The circuit had logged in Klien and rookie Marco Andretti's cars wrong - so Andretti was getting credited with some very impressive times early on before observers realised that these were in fact being set by Klien.

Robert Kubica showed that BMW-Sauber were getting on top of the electronic and tyre issues that have dogged their early testing with the sixth quickest time, while it was not an easy day for seventh fastest Luca Badoer.

The Ferrari test driver had to go home early after he suffered an engine failure. With 2007 power-units due to be lodged with the FIA after this test, the latest problem will be a bit of a concern for his Italian team as they evaluate just what specification to homologate.

Teams were allowed to nominate a 'Tuning List' of parts that they wanted to develop from the engines lodged straight after the season. That work has to be completed by the end of today - so Ferrari's Luca Baldisserri and Gilles Simon were on hand in Jerez to make the final decision.

Vitantonio Liuzzi helped out Red Bull Racing to set the ninth quickest time, while Sebastien Bourdais ended up 12th overall with a best lap of 1:21.277 to end his three days of running with Scuderia Toro Rosso.

Alexander Wurz had a pretty miserable time for Williams, ending up 13th overall and bringing out two red flags. He stopped at 10:20am and 11:28am with mechanical problems.

Andretti, overseen by his father Michael, completed 67 laps for Honda Racing and was 14th quickest, while compatriot Scott Speed complained of sore hands after his accident yesterday and was well adrift at the bottom of the timesheets after completing just 14 laps.

Today's times:

Pos  Driver       Team                      Time       Laps
 1.  Hamilton     McLaren-Mercedes     (B)  1:19.493   100
 2.  Kovalainen   Renault              (B)  1:19.586    92
 3.  Alonso       McLaren-Mercedes     (B)  1:19.750    95
 4.  Fisichella   Renault              (B)  1:19.798   100
 5.  Klien        Honda                (B)  1:19.835   121
 6.  Kubica       BMW-Sauber           (B)  1:19.894   125
 7.  Badoer       Ferrari              (B)  1:19.899    38
 8.  Vettel       BMW-Sauber           (B)  1:20.069   117
 9.  Liuzzi       Red Bull-Ferrari     (B)  1:20.191    72
10.  Sato         Super Aguri-Honda    (B)  1:20.854   104
11.  Gene         Ferrari              (B)  1:21.015    98
12.  Bourdais     Toro Rosso-Cosworth  (B)  1:21.277   100
13.  Wurz         Williams-Toyota      (B)  1:21.368    64
14.  Andretti     Honda                (B)  1:21.888    67
15.  Speed        Toro Rosso-Cosworth  (B)  1:23.315    14

All timing unofficial

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