Kovalainen tops final day at Jerez

With the wind that had played havoc with the teams on Wednesday not reappearing, F1 squads were able to complete a more useful day of running as they got through their programmes.

Kovalainen's best lap, which was more than half a second clear of Red Bull Racing's David Coulthard, was set in the morning - as the new design of rim covers on the MP4-22 caused a stir in the pitlane.

The Finn, who covered nearly 100 laps during the day, was carrying out qualifying simulations.

Behind Coulthard, Kazuki Nakajima set the third fastest time, just ahead of McLaren's Lewis Hamilton and BMW Sauber's Robert Kubica.

Sebastian Vettel maintained the solid progress of Scuderia Toro Rosso to end the day sixth overall on the timesheets, having brought out one of the day's two red flags when his car stopped between Turn 4 and 5 at 2.50pm.

The other red flag was brought out by Williams test driver Nico Hulkenberg, whose car stopped on track at Turn 7 with just less than two hours of the session remaining.

Honda again ended the day as the slowest of the manufacturer teams, having reverted to their older type of rear wing for today's testing.

Today's times:

Pos  Driver        Team                      Time      Laps
 1.  Kovalainen    McLaren-Mercedes     (B)  1:17.974   96
 2.  Coulthard     Red Bull-Renault     (B)  1:18.485  107
 3.  Nakajima      Williams-Toyota      (B)  1:19.117   90
 4.  Hamilton      McLaren-Mercedes     (B)  1:19.429   83
 5.  Kubica        BMW-Sauber           (B)  1:19.535  129
 6.  Vettel        Toro Rosso-Ferrari   (B)  1:19.688   53
 7.  Piquet        Renault              (B)  1:19.817  134
 8.  Bourdais      Toro Rosso-Ferrari   (B)  1:19.848  101
 9.  Heidfeld      BMW-Sauber           (B)  1:19.934  116
10.  Webber        Red Bull-Renault     (B)  1:19.980  107
11.  Fisichella    Force India-Ferrari  (B)  1:20.669   89
12.  Button        Honda                (B)  1:20.988  121
13.  Davidson      Super Aguri-Honda    (B)  1:21.010  103
14.  Hulkenberg    Williams-Toyota      (B)  1:21.116   71
15.  di Grassi     Renault              (B)  1:21.286   73
16.  Wurz          Honda                (B)  1:21.605  103

All Timing Unofficial