Jerez day 3 - AM: Michelin leads in wet

Michelin shod cars topped the time sheets of a very wet morning session, with Jaguar Racing's Eddie Irvine setting the fastest time, closely followed by Giancarlo Fisichella in the interim Benetton B200B.

Heavy rain at the southern Spanish circuit has not thwarted the nine teams taking part in the test and Irvine, who could only manage fifth place in the dry on Tuesday, was the only man to dip into the 1m34s bracket.

Fisichella completed just one lap yesterday due to problems with his Renault-powered Benetton, but has run without fault so far today (Wednesday). The car is fitted with the Regie's revolutionary wide V-angled unit, which was tested for the first time at Silverstone last Friday.

New signing Jenson Button is driving this year's car in order to acclimatise to his new team. The 20-year-old set the fourth fastest time this morning, behind Nick Heidfeld who took third for his new team Sauber and was best of the Bridgestone runners.

Juan Pablo Montoya continued to impress by beating Williams-BMW team mate Ralf Schumacher and broke for lunch just 0.120s behind Button.

Alexander Wurz, who Button replaced at Benetton, had a less successful morning as the Austrian settles into his new role as test driver for McLaren-Mercedes. Fine-tuning of his driving position in the MP4-15B left Wurz second from bottom yesterday, and the 26-year-old then had a slight off into the gravel on his first run out today.

The session was red-flagged just once due to Williams test driver Marc Gene stopping out on the circuit with suspected engine problems. The Spaniard's FW22 was towed back to the pits.

To see more pictures from the Jerez test in Autosport.com's race gallery, (Click Here).




1 Eddie Irvine (M) Jaguar 1m34.998s
2 Giancarlo Fisichella (M) Benetton-Renault 1m35.134s
3 Nick Heidfeld (B) Sauber-Petronas 1m35.300s
4 Jenson Button (M) Benetton-Renault/Supertec 1m35.541s
5 Juan Pablo Montoya (M) Williams-BMW 1m35.621s
6 David Coulthard (B) McLaren-Mercedes 1m35.674s
7 Ralf Schumacher (M) Williams-BMW 1m35.759s
8 Rubens Barrichello (B) Ferrari 1m35.798s



To see photographs from Wednesday's test session at Jerez, click HERE.