Ricard 3: Button again

Jenson Button was the king of the Formula 1 testing castle once again at Paul Ricard on Thursday, the BAR-Honda ace outpacing last year's world championship runner-up Kimi Raikkonen of McLaren-Mercedes by just over a second

Button left the circuit in the south of France to make way for team-mate Takuma Sato on Friday, safe in the knowledge that his BAR team appears to have made yet more progress. The Briton logged a whacking 150 laps on the new Imola-spec Honda engine.

Jenson told autosport.com: "It's all very positive ahead of Imola, although we know Ferrari will be very strong there. I'm happy with what we've done, and the reliability has been flawless over the past two days. I'm not sure about the tyres for Imola, whether they will be good or not there, but we'll see what Taku does tomorrow."

Raikkonen was also happier than of late with his second fastest time. He told autosport.com: "I'm quite happy with the car's handling over these three days. We can see that BAR is very fast here, but as for Imola it is hard to tell at the moment. We'll have to wait and see when we get there."

When asked about his hopes for the start of the European season, he quipped: "I wish I could say that I could win the next five races, but I don't know!"

Antonio Pizzonia took over at Williams-BMW and set the third fastest time as he worked through an Imola tyre programme. The second McLaren of David Coulthard was fourth fastest.

DC told us: "We've managed a lot of mileage here, but at the end of the day it's only testing - I don't want to say it will be like this at Imola, but I think it could be very interesting. Straightline speed and handling over the kerbs is going to be vital. We've made some good improvements, and some average ones. I'm quite happy with it."

Fernando Alonso and Franck Montagny were next up, the Spaniard suffering with some problems with the new Imola-spec engine which caused him to halt the session. Toyota duo Olivier Panis and Ryan Briscoe were seventh and eighth.

Christian Klien was the slowest on the day after a rear suspension failure brought Jaguar's test to a premature end.

"It was a shame," Klien told autosport.com. "I felt something strange at the right rear, so I brought it in. The team wanted to check it out at the factory, so that was it."

Jenson Button BAR-Honda M 1m06.301s 150
Kimi Raikkonen McLaren-Mercedes M 1m07.375s 99
Antonio Pizzonia Williams-BMW M 1m07.706s 110
David Coulthard McLaren-Mercedes M 1m07.786s 98
Fernando Alonso Renault M 1m08.077s 98
Franck Montagny Renault M 1m08.227s 66
Olivier Panis Toyota M 1m08.418s 97
Ryan Briscoe Toyota M 1m08.657s 128
Christian Klien Jaguar M 1m09.567s 25