Trulli tops rain-hit test at Paul Ricard

After two days using a layout to simulate the high-downforce demands for Monaco, the teams used a revised configuration to try out the low-downforce and heavy braking that is required for Montreal.

With the day badly impacted by rain showers, Trulli only completed 26 laps to set a best time of 1:31.360 during a break in the weather.

His time was threetenths of a second clear of Nelson Piquet in the Renault.

"With the first two days of this week's test devoted to Monaco preparations we had scheduled an intensive programme today because Montreal is a very different type of circuit and we wanted to try out different aerodynamic and mechanical solutions," said Trulli .

"You run less downforce in Montreal compared to Monaco so the car set-up is very different and we had planned a lot of work on this. It was frustrating that the rain came early in the day and meant that we could not collect any dry data."

McLaren test driver Pedro de la Rosa was third quickest, ahead of Sebastian Vettel - who will have been very encouraged by the pace of his new Toro Rosso STR3.

Felipe Massa was fifth quickest, after abandoning his running after just 19 laps because of the poor weather - and the fact that Ferrari did not want to waste any testing mileage that could be more valuable later in the season.

Nick Heidfeld was sixth fastest, but lost of some time having his car repaired after he went off the track at Turn 7 just before the lunch break, damaging the rear left suspension and the back of his car.

The only other red flag of the day was caused by Adrian Sutil, who damaged his nose cone with an incident in the final half hour of running.

"This afternoon was very wet until the sun came out towards the end of the day," said Sutil. "As such we started on extreme wets and got in a couple of runs to try out the wet set-up.

"We did some starts and everything was OK, but with these conditions it is very difficult to draw any real conclusions."

Today's times:

Pos  Driver        Team                      Time     Laps
 1.  Trulli        Toyota               (B)  1:31.360   26
 2.  Piquet        Renault              (B)  1:31.634   60
 3.  de la Rosa    McLaren-Mercedes     (B)  1:32.143   53
 4.  Vettel        Toro Rosso-Ferrari   (B)  1:32.480   49
 5.  Massa         Ferrari              (B)  1:33.246   19
 6.  Heidfeld      BMW-Sauber           (B)  1:33.371   30
 7.  Buemi         Red Bull-Renault     (B)  1:34.064   16
 8.  Fisichella    Force India-Ferrari  (B)  1:34.071   31
 9.  Button        Honda                (B)  1:36.501   19
10.  Sutil         Force India-Ferrari  (B)  1:43.877   13
11.  Hulkenberg    Williams             (B)  1:44.741   35

All Timing Unofficial