Jerez 5: Wurz quickest

Wurz and Montoya were the pace-setters and, although Heidfeld ended the day more than three tenths of a second faster than his Williams rival, the lap times meant little because once again Pizzonia was hit by bad luck.

While Heidfeld made the most of being allowed to experiment with the car's set-up for the first time, as well as getting through an impressive nine sets of tyres for one-off laps to try and push the Williams to the limits, Pizzonia found his chances of matching his team-mate's times wiped out when he was stopped in the pits with an oil leak when the track was at its quickest. He then decided to concentrate on long race-runs in the afternoon.

Pizzonia's bad luck on Friday mirrored similar problems earlier in the week, including two engine failures and gearbox gremlins, that have failed to allow him to show his true potential in the car.

As Williams edges close a decision on who will partner Mark Webber this season Pizzonia's misfortunate could not come at a worse time, but he was well aware that the team will take into consideration all circumstances from the tests rather than mere lap times.

"I did not really have a good test because I had quite a few problems," he told autosport.com . "Today was an oil leak, but after that the car went okay and I had quite a consistent car for the long runs. Let's see what happens in the next test."

Toyota ended the day's running as slowest overall but the team was happy about the back-to-back comparison test that showed its new TF105 to be just seven tenths of a second slower than its predecessor - despite F1's new speed-cutting technical regulations this year.

But although the team was happy with the progress of the car, Trulli suffered a few problems in the afternoon with his HANS device fitting into the cockpit of the new chassis.

Testing continues at Jerez over the weekend with Michelin conducting some wet weather tests.



Alexander Wurz (McLaren) 1m16.052s, 99 laps
Juan Pablo Montoya (McLaren) 1m16.558s, 102 laps
Nick Heidfeld (Williams) 1m16.736s, 117 laps
Antonio Pizzonia (Williams) 1m17.070s, 126 laps
Ricardo Zonta (Toyota) 1m17.305s, 162 laps
Jarno Trulli (Toyota) 1m18.048s, 75 laps
Marc Gene (Ferrari) 1m18.475s, 50 laps